


This World's Not Big Enough OR When Tony Stark Needs a Vacation

by Crystalwho



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universes, Awesome Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Extreamis, Fix-It, Jarvis lives, M/M, New Earths are fun, Other Universes are a Great Distraction, Parallel Universes, Peter Parker - Freeform, Portals, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Slash, Pre-Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Pre-Stony, Protective Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Starks are Made of Iron, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Still Has Arc Reactor, Tony Stark is always getting into something, Tony just wants a Vacation, Tony loves Steve, Tony-centric, Yes he knows it's a Bad idea, slight PTSD, slowly, universe hopping, universe jumping, until they're not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-18 17:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14218413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crystalwho/pseuds/Crystalwho
Summary: After the civil war with Steve, Tony doesn’t want anything to do with this world that would sooner tear itself apart than bring the peace Tony knows is possible if they would all just work together. So he does what he has always done, he starts tinkering. This Earth is not be ready to be saved, so fuck it. Maybe there is another Earth that would let him help, if not at least he won’t have to be here.





	1. Old Habits

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, first Iron Man / Avengers fic so tell me if you like it! :)

**Chapter 1: Old Habits**

         It had been three month since that horrible day in Siberia. The day Tony saw Steve’s dark side. He had told Steve once he didn’t trust someone without a dark side, what he didn’t say is that it’s because he knew everyone had one. If they didn’t it meant they were just hiding it better than everyone else. Now… he didn’t know if Steve’s dark side was worse than even his.

     Yeah, he made Ultron (no matter what Bruce says) but at least he had almost destroyed the world on accident. Steve tore the world apart on purpose, and didn’t give a damn who he had to go through to save his Hydra infected assassin. Okay, so he was being slightly unfair but he really didn’t care. Of course he realized Barnes was brain washed, Steve had even said as much and yea he would totally go after the people that had sent Barnes after his parents, because he knew Barnes was just the gun and he wanted the bastards that aimed and fired him.

      At the time he found out about his parents murder though, Barnes was a readily accessible target. The only reason he had to NOT blow the guy’s head off was Steve, and then he knew Steve had lied to him, for years. So yeah, he decked Steve for that and he wasn’t sorry. He was sorry for everything that happened next. Wanting to kill Barnes in that moment was probably a normal reaction, but he wasn’t normal.

     Fortunately even as pissed as he was at Steve he knew he could never go through him even to get to Barnes which was why he didn’t just blast a hole through them both and be done with it. It was also why he was so shocked that Steve seemed perfectly willing to beat him to death, heat of the moment or not. He even destroyed the suit’s arc reactor. If it wasn’t for extreamis Tony wasn’t sure he would have survived.

     The last three months since weren’t any better, Ross wouldn’t shut up about the others escaping from the Raft, and was trying to blame Tony for it without any proof. Not that he didn’t have anything to do with it, he just was a little insulted that Ross thought he would leave evidence. On a good point he had finally put Jarvis back together with a bit of help from Friday. Thankfully he had thought ahead with that one and had Jarvis back himself up but Jarvis had to do it so quickly when the others showed up to stop him and Bruce from making Vision that his code had been a mess.

      Tony sighed as he connected some more wires on the portal he was making. He had been doing his best to legally clear his old teammates to come out of hiding. Including Captain Asshole. He knew it was foolish, that they all hated him, that they would never be a team again, but he was doing what he could anyway. Along with his legal team and PR department. Not that he wasn’t still angry, he didn’t want to see any of those idiots.

     All they had to do was trust him and he could have repealed the hell out of those Accords. They just didn’t understand the first thing about politics, which was fine, that was his job, but he couldn’t do this one without their support. Is it too much to ask the people you fought and almost died beside on multiple occasions to trust you enough to sign a damn piece of paper? So much for the whole ‘Together’ thing. Rogers is such a hypocrite.

     Tony frowned and pulled his hand back quickly as one of the wires he was fitting sparked at him. Okay so the resistor should be a little stronger and moved over there. He was trying to bend space a little differently, but he knew it was possible and all the theories were sound even if the info he got from Reed was a little sketchy. Really the dimensional theories Reed Richards and Jane Foster had were mostly sound they just didn’t know how to contain it into a portal, but Tony was an engineer, the best on the planet, and he knew just how to make it work. He just wanted to be sure it didn’t blow him up.

      “A little higher Dummy.” Tony murmured to the bot as he brought over the blow torch and slipped on some dark goggles. It wouldn’t be long now and he wouldn’t have to deal with _all_ the havoc Rogers left behind.  Pepper could run his company like usual, and Iron Man would ‘officially’ be off active Avenger status again along with Vision. At least in this world. After all he had never intended to carry out Ross’s dirty work and if Ross couldn’t find him he couldn’t threaten him. Not that Tony would ever give into the taunts, he just needed a vacation.

     “Sir, it has been 63 hours since you last slept and 12 hours since you last ate anything that needed chewing. I would suggest you take a break,” Jarvis broke into his thoughts. Tony finished the welding he was doing before replying.

      “You would, huh?” He smirked, knowing Jarvis had left his sentence open ended on purpose. He really had missed their verbal sparring.

       “Yes, though I doubt it would make a difference if I did.” Jarvis’s bland tone replied, as if he had been hoping his creator would ask. Tony smirked.

       “Never say never J. I am kind of hungry.” Tony rubbed his eyes. He had been trying to give into Jarvis more since he almost lost his closest friend/child twice. However since Extreamis was fully activated by his near death experience in Siberia he had been able stay awake longer, much longer than he ever normally could, but he was still mostly human and needed fuel and rest to keep going. Not that anyone knew except him but he could get extreamis to use the power of his arc reactor to sustain his body if he really needed to, though for various reasons it wasn’t a good idea.

     As he walked up the stairs to get some lunch, dinner… breakfast? Some food, he wondered for what might be the millionth time if Steve had known he still had an arc reactor embedded into his chest and if he would have still targeted it if he did. Tony was never so glad he started giving the suits separate reactors from his own. He knew that Steve heard he was going to undergo surgery to remove the reactor but he didn’t know if Steve knew that he didn’t end up having the surgery.

     He had injected himself with extreamis after fixing the compound to not turn him into a bomb and adding a little nanite technology. Almost completely altering it for himself so that it would strengthen his body to survive the surgery, and help repair his chest along with the cradle technology to replace the bone, muscle, and tissue that wouldn’t be there once the arc reactor was removed. Instead extreamis immediately started assimilating.

     It made his body stronger, more durable, like he had programmed it to but it didn’t stop there. His mind started working differently, he could assimilate information better and faster, his brain was working faster than a super computer, he had checked. After Siberia though suddenly he could feel the technology around him as though all he needed to do was reach out and touch it, and he did.

      He had always been exceptional with any kind of tech but extreamis had magnified that too. He hadn’t told anyone of course, that would not be wise with the whole accords thing going on, but it seemed he had made himself a mutant. Technopath seemed the closest to what extreamis had made him. With even just the first changes though he couldn’t chance one of the doctors seeing he wasn’t normal and the information getting out. So surgery was out and the arc reactor was left in.

      Now that extreamis had fully activated though he realized he didn’t need the surgery, he could program extreamis now even while it was already inside his body, maybe even better than when he programed it manually. He programed extreamis like a computer to break down the metal shrapnel in his body and flush it out. And it worked, but extreamis was a learning program and since without the shrapnel near his heart and his heart in better health than ever extreamis knew he no long needed the arc reactor to protect his heart.

       So extreamis broke down most the internal casing that was there for the electromagnet to reach his heart. Then used the metal to strengthen his very bones while leaving the arc reactor as a functioning power source that was connected to him. His lungs regenerated back in the space the casing no longer was as well as other sticky bits, though he was most happy with the lungs now that he could take deep breaths without pain again. On the surface the scared edges on his chest smoothed out where it was connected to the arc reactor while making the skin around it tougher with some of the metal that was broken down.  

     “Sir, there is something on the news I think you will want to see.” Jarvis spoke up and turned the nearby TV on as Tony was stuffing the last bit of a rather full sandwich in his mouth and pulling him from his thoughts. He felt the food settle badly at Jarvis’s tone. His AI knew exactly how to use tones and that one didn’t sound good. He hoped it wasn’t Ross, as he saw the TV he knew it was worse.

      “The Captain’s Avengers have arrived on the scene in Nigeria in what looks like an effort to protect the refugees, from the current warlord’s sudden attack.” The news woman went on but Tony wasn’t listening he was watching the footage of his friends- former friends fighting without him and each bullet fired made him want to flinch. He briefly turned his head as he felt Vision place a hand on his shoulder. Tony knew Vision probably just came through the wall again which he usually found amusing but he couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.

     “Jarvis pull up all footage you can get of the battle and look for a satellite pointing that way.” Tony stated after a moment. He knew the UN hadn’t cleared him to go there, and even if he could get cleared he would never make it in time to help. He knew he shouldn’t care about them. That they had all turned their backs on him but part of him also knew he would never forgive himself if any of them got killed. He had to keep himself from cringing as Steve had to jump behind a jeep for cover from gun fire instead of using his shield that was gathering dust down in its bulletproof case in Tony’s lab.

     It was less than a minute before Jarvis had pulled up seven different news stations covering the battle and two different satellite views, all across the glass screen in front of him. After about ten minutes Tony relaxed just slightly, Steve’s team had the upper hand now and were mostly just picking off the rest.

     Now after the action was mostly over he realized Vision had not moved his hand so he gave Vision’s wrist a squeeze as he got up. He was never good with words but he touched Vision’s shoulder gently as he left the kitchen with a soft, “They’re okay.” He knew Vision worried about Wanda almost as much as he worried about Steve.

     So Tony went back down to his workshop trying not think about the day that they wouldn’t be okay. He reached out with a thought through extreamis and the footage of the battle was on the screens in the lab for him to monitor even as he mostly ignored them in favor of inputting some data to the now hopefully finished frame of the soon to be interdimensional portal. He didn’t technically need the monitors as he could watch the footage directly in his mind with extreamis but it was distracting and he was trying to concentrate.

     Tony had been working on the interdimensional portal almost constantly for the last month and knew he could get the portal to work in his own world but he wasn’t aiming for a teleporter. (Though he knew he would have fun with that later.) He needed to expand it to the multiverse. After going through all of Reed Richard’s theories he found the problem. Reed seemed to be unable to stabilize or generate enough power. Tony smirked, he didn’t have that problem. The smirk was quickly dropped from his face when he heard an explosion from the footage he was keeping on in the background of his mind and one of his screens.

      Unmuting the physical screen playing the live footage with a thought Tony felt himself go cold. “Reports are coming in that Captain America was in the building at the time of the explosion. According to some eyewitnesses he had gone to search for anyone still inside.-” Tony stopped listening, his mind vaguely noting that Vision had phased in as he worked the math of Roger’s probable location, how quickly the others could dig him out, injuries he had when he went in, and any injuries he may have sustained in the building’s collapse. Even factoring Steve’s healing ability. Tony abruptly stopped calculating the odds when they got lower than twenty percent. That was unacceptable.

       Quickly turning over every possible way to help Steve in his head from how long it would take him to get there verses how long it would take to dig him out, to where he could tell Cap’s team where to dig, and factoring the approximate time limit that Steve could survive down there, given the few variables that he had, which wasn’t many. Granted there was a chance Steve didn’t get hurt in the explosion and a building falling on top of him but it was extremely unlikely. He slowly turned around as another idea came to him, ignoring Vision’s worried stare for now, it could work. It wasn’t ready to cross dimensions but all he would need to do to get to Steve was bend space. Easy enough but he would need a focal point.

      “Sir?” “Tony?” The dual voices of Vision and Jarvis creeped him out but obtained the intended purpose of pulling him from his thoughts.

     “I have an idea.” Tony stated with a smirk though it was soon gone as he remembered why he was doing this. Steve better be alive.

      “Do you know your eyes turned black?” Vision asked tilting his head slightly in curiosity. Tony raised an eyebrow. Wondering if the android was serious. When there was no further explanation Tony pulled up footage of the lab directly into his mind and rewound it thirty second to see that his eyes had indeed turned black about the moment he tapped into extreamis and then changed back when he turned to Vision.

     “That’s… disconcerting.” Tony stared at his image in his mind for a moment, he looked like a demon or something. “I am constantly using extreamis for little things but it must do that when I’m actively using it…” He shook his head, banished the image and set a new protocol that would keep his eyes looking normal in any recording he was connected to with a thought before going back to his plan.

      “No time to go into that, J remind me to wear sunglasses with company, we need to get the portal up and running now. And locate Steve’s archaic phone, if he brought it with him we could use it to pin point his location.” Tony spoke even as he started putting the last pieces of the hardware together that made up the portal. It wouldn’t take long to finish the hardware part of the portal he just needed to give it a power source, and the software was half way done but he could code faster than ever now that he didn’t even need to use a keyboard and Jarvis would be helping him move even faster.

     “Friday see if you can find any other way to get a lock on Steve’s location.” He would have Friday help with the coding too but she didn’t understand his mind like Jarvis and what direction his mind would take in the code. If she went another way it would slow him and Jarvis down, and he’d have to look over everything she had done.                         

       It kind of freaked him out to think his eyes were going black while he was coding through extreamis but he wouldn’t have survived this long without being good at compartmentalizing. So he threw the thought to a dark corner in the back of his mind and kept coding as he walked over to the safe he kept his extra arc reactors in. They didn’t fit to him anymore and he no longer needed them to keep him alive but he’d had backups from before and now they would come in handy.

       “It will take too long to reconfigure this…” Tony frowned running the math of how much power he needed, how much the old arc reactors could put out at once and how much it could sustain. It wouldn’t be enough to sustain the portal indefinitely but, it would be able to keep a portal open for about one hundred and twenty-two seconds, just over two minutes. It would have to do.

      “Sir, that chest piece was never meant to run something that requires as much power as the interdimensional portal will need.” Jarvis spoke up as Tony carefully connected the power source.

       “I’m aware, but with our current time table it will have to do.” Tony stepped back and surveyed the portal. It had been twenty minutes since Rogers was trapped and by now all of his team had finished off any attackers and were trying to locate him in the rubble. Without the Hulk or Thor to dig, and without him or Bruce to tell them where or how to dig without causing a collapse they weren’t getting very far. He briefly thought of calling one of them and saying something (of course he could get their numbers he was Tony fucking Stark) but he dismissed the thought. He would have Steve out before he could even get them to listen to him.

       The coding was complete thirty minutes after Steve had been buried, so Tony tested the code once more quickly and it went through. It worked, now all he had to do was put it into practice.

      “Alright Friday put in the coordinates you found for Cap but put it three feet to the side of him we don’t want to open this on top of him.” Tony stated, though if wasn’t worried about Rogers he’d be tempted to drop from a portal onto Steve’s head.

     “All locked in Boss!” Friday cheered, she sounded excited. He was excited for this to work too but his annoying worry about Steve was severely dampening it. He took a breath and flipped the switch to connect the portal to the arc reactor. It hummed to life and Tony could feel it’s life for lack of a better word, stabilize. He wouldn’t have long, a countdown started in the back of his mind.

      “Okay Jarvis open it, we don’t have long.” Tony ordered standing in front of the portal gate. Jarvis activated it immediately and Tony froze. It looked so similar to one he flew a missile through that lead to the coldness of space, the Chitauri, and death and falling and the nightmare vision Wanda forced on him that lead to Ultron. Was this it? Was this how he destroyed the world? Was-

         “Sir?” Jarvis called to him and he felt Vision place a hand on his shoulder pulling him back to reality. He turned, slightly out of breath to a confused and worried looking Vision.

      “Time is running out, if you would prefer I could go through the portal.” Vision’s calm voice offered. That though pulled Tony the rest of his way out of his day-mare. Steve needed him and as much as he would like to take Vision up on his offer, he would never send one of his kids before him.

       “No, no. I’m good.” He took a settling breath and grabbed a pipe off a nearby work table and stuck it through the open portal before pulling it back. He breathed slightly easier at the unmarred metal. He knew he should do more extensive testing before using it himself and he knew Jarvis and Friday were already running some of them but he didn’t have time to wait on the results. So he called his armor to wrap around him with barely a thought and with one final deep breath he stepped through the portal. 

      …And straight into a low hanging chunk of cement that made a dull thudding sound when his helmet smacked into it. Frowning in annoyance as it didn’t actually hurt and he was mostly just glad no one saw it, Tony more carefully move forward and started searching for Steve. He had aimed for three feet from the super soldier but this was a trial run. When he was starting to worry he had missed by more than a few feet and going to scan the area he spotted a familiar red glove. He was sure his heart stopped for a moment when he realized Steve was covered in so much dust and debris that he almost missed him.

       It was the wood beam across Steve that really made him worry though. He went to Steve side quickly and lifted up the beam that seemed to be holding a good bit of the collapsed building from falling completely on Steve, carefully. Steve coughed weakly now that the beams pressure was off him but didn’t move otherwise, still unconscious. “Steve?” Tony tried to wake him so he could move out from under the beam Tony couldn’t move anymore without everything falling on top of them. “Steve? Steve!” He tried a few more times and Steve moved slightly but otherwise didn’t react.

       Tony frowned even more worried than before. He was running out of time though the portal wouldn’t stay open much longer. ‘ _Vision, I need some help._ ’ He reached out to Vision with extreamis, he wasn’t sure sound could go through the portal but he could always connect to Vision. Not a moment later Vision came through the portal and took in his surroundings same as Tony had done a moment ago, without bumping his head Tony noted somewhere in the back of his mind even as he felt the wooden beam start to crack under the strain of everything it was keeping from crushing Steve.

      “Vision grab Steve, we don’t have a lot of time.” Tony nodded toward the Captain still unable to move while holding the cracking beam up. Vision didn’t waste time and had grabbed Steve up and gone back through the portal in seconds. Tony relax slightly, the portal would only be open for about twenty more seconds but Steve had come in here for a reason.

     “Hello! Anyone here?!” Tony called out while using the suit to scan for life signs. There were no life signs bigger than rats so after a few more calls to be sure Tony dropped the beam and flew through the narrow space into the glowing blue portal as the small space behind him collapsed in on itself. He tried to focus on the fact that the portal glowed the same shade of blue as his arc reactor as his flew to it and any other aspect that separated it from the sinister portal that had almost killed him.

      Tony pulled up quickly trying not to crash as he entered his lab. He mostly succeeded in not destroying anything, but took out a table. He just laid there trying to not panic, he knew that he would have to conquer this stupid fear when he started thinking about making a portal, and he damn well wasn’t going to let it beat him. Starks were made of iron, and he’d been through worse, much worse. He pushed himself to a sitting position still breathing hard.

      Vision had Captain America laid out on a nearby table but he was watching Tony closely. Tony ignored the concerned gaze as best he could and focused on Steve, and that made it easier. Steve was hurt, he needed help, and Tony despite every reason he really shouldn’t still loves Steve. He pushed himself up and went to the super soldier. “Jarvis full body scan.” He ordered as he stepped up beside Vision to hover over Steve and look for any injuries with his own eyes.


	2. Conflicting Emotions are Annoying

Chapter 2: Conflicting Emotions are Annoying  
   

     Steve’s shoulder looked terrible. The beam that had been holding up the tiny space Tony had found him in had mostly been on his shoulder, and it looked dislocated.

     “Scans complete. Sir, Captain Rogers has two cracked ribs, a dislocated right shoulder, a concussion, multiple contusions and lacerations, and his lunges seem to be working extra hard to filter out the dust and debris he must have inhaled.” Jarvis reported. Tony watched Steve’s breathing and noted that he was breathing more deeply and quicker than a sleeping person should. He and Vision worked together easily without a word as they put the super soldier’s shoulder back into place.         

       “Uhg.” Steve grunted and tried to twist away off the table at the pain of his shoulder being popped back into place. Tony grabbed him by his uninjured arm before he got far, and saw Steve barely open his eyes and knew Steve was trying to figure out if he needed to fight.

      “Easy soldier,” Tony slowly turned him to where he was laying on his back again. “you’re safe. Just rest.” He kept his voice steady trying to keep Steve calm even as he noted Vision had moved back. It was a good move, no telling what he’d think waking up with Tony there, two of them might make him feel cornered. 

     “’ony?” Steve blinked slowly and Vision placed some supplies on the table to clean and bandage Steve, while still staying out of Steve’s line of sight.

     “Yea, it’s me. Just rest, you’re fine, everyone’s fine.” Tony said knowing Steve’s first thought would be if his team was alright, that didn’t include him anymore so it’s wasn’t even a lie. Steve relaxed back onto the table still looking confused as Tony carefully pulled off his body armor and t-shirt with a little help from his now complacent patient before he started cleaning out some of the larger cuts that litter the captain’s chest and arms. Steve seemed to fall back asleep sometime in the middle of the process.

     Tony finished knowing he couldn’t do much about the cracked ribs and that they would be healed in the next day or two anyway. He could give Steve some oxygen but his breathing was already evening out. Knowing that he couldn’t do more for the injuries Tony grabbed a wet shop paper towel and started gently wiping the dust and grit off Steve’s face, blue eyes flutter at the contact but shut soon after. His body was trying to shut down any systems it didn’t need to recover and heal, so as long as Steve didn’t believe he was in danger Tony knew he would sleep for a little while. Seemed Tony Stark didn’t register as dangerous, Tony didn’t know if he was relieved that Steve’s subconscious didn’t think he would hurt him or insulted that Steve didn’t think he could.

    Mentally shrugging Tony finished wiping the top half of Steve off, he wasn’t clean but it was the best he was going to get without a shower. So Tony mentally called his suit back to him, he was sure that with extreamis he could lift Steve but he didn't want to risk dropping the two-hundred and thirty pound super soldier on the stairs. After his armor formed around him minus the helmet, he carefully picked Steve up like a damsel and carried him upstairs to his old room. Which if Steve were awake and things were normal he would totally tease him about, now though it was just hard being this close to Steve. The armor kept him from physically making contact but through the sensors and extreamis he could sense the warmth of Steve’s body and the little shift when Steve unconsciously leaned his head on Tony’s shoulder.

     Once he got to Steve’s room he saw that Vision had thoughtfully already pulled back the blankets so Tony reluctantly laid Steve down. He had learned to ignore that warm feeling a long time ago. Tony debated whether or not he should take Steve’s pants off, and carefully removed them after taking in the specs of blood and ton of dirt on them. As he covered Steve with the blanket he stopped and let himself watch his sleeping former friend/crush for a moment with his own eyes. Mentally flicking the gauntlet back from his hand he reached out and gently touched the side of Steve’s face with the tips of his fingers. After a moment he made himself take a step back, reassembled the armor around his hand and walked out.

      Tony wanted to scold himself. He knew better, Steve would never want him that way. Steve had almost killed him. On purpose. So even if he lo- liked Steve like that Steve obviously didn’t even care about him, even as a friend. He was only asking for trouble to even think about it. Down that way lay madness.

     On his way out he left the door open so Steve wouldn’t jump to conclusions of being a prisoner if he woke up before the engineer could get back to his… guest. As he went down the stairs back to the lab Tony tried to remind himself of all the reasons he should not be getting sentimental, or why he shouldn’t have gone after Steve at all. The problem with that though is he just couldn’t manage the level of anger he would need to sustain an active grudge. Not toward Steve anyway. Though he could do passive aggression to an art form he didn’t seem to have the will to do that to Steve at the moment either, but that might change once the soldier woke up and opened his mouth.

      Tony pushed the thought away, he didn’t even want to _think_ about fighting with Steve. He had just proven that he wasn’t over him. That even after Steve betrayed him, lied to him, beat him half to death for the sake of his real friend and left him for dead… he still couldn’t _not_ help Steve. After all if Captain America could do those things to him maybe he deserved it. It wasn’t like he had a history of good choices behind him. As he got back to the lab and spotted his newest creation he really hoped that it wouldn’t be his next bad decision.

      He pushed the thought to the far corner of his mind as just about anything he made could be used to do harm, and he honestly didn’t know if he would want to survive if he couldn’t create new, and better things. It was who he was. Who he had been born and raised to be. So he sat down and went back to working on its code, he now had to redo some of it so it would work interdimensional. Though the data from using it as a teleporter was actually helpful.

       “Jarvis, let me know when the Captain wakes up.” Tony paused in his coding for a moment as he realized the next thing he had to do. “And patch me a line to Wakanda. Ghost security protocol.” Tony sighed, pausing in his coding as he tried to think of how he would word what he had to say.

     “Calling Sir.” Jarvis confirmed and a hologram popped up with the word ‘Calling...’ on the screen. It was a few seconds before King T’Challa’s face was displayed on the hologram.

     “Mr. Stark, what do I owe the pleasure?” T’Challa answered. It seemed he had been working on his diplomacy. Tony stared at him a short moment before deciding he didn’t want to use his bullshitting political acting and that he’d rather just be blunt.

     “I know you’ve been protecting Steve and the others; this line is secure.” He added as T’Challa started to open his mouth then continued before the king could object anyway. “I didn’t call to talk about that. Since they are staying there however I assume you have a way to contact them at the moment?” Tony paused giving the king a moment to speak.

      “If this was true, why would you be asking?” T’Challa questioned carefully. That was as close to a yes as Tony knew he would get.

      “I need you to tell them they can stop digging. Steve is safe. And not anywhere near where they think he is.” He could of course just contact them directly himself, but they didn’t trust him. And even if they knew it originally came from him they would be more likely to believe the information if it was delivered by a trusted source.

     T’Challa frowned and Tony could practically see all the questions he wanted to ask but wouldn’t in case the line wasn’t secure and he was being set up. “I see. And if Steve Rogers is not where they think he is, where is he?” asked the king. The king was being careful with his words and Tony could respect that but the genius had no need to be. The king may not yet believe Tony was helping Steve and his team but Tony knew T’Challa was.

     “He’s with me.” Tony stated bluntly looking T’Challa in the eyes. Knowing that without the secure line he said they were on he just admitted to harboring an international fugitive. “I’d put him on the line but he is resting right now. I’ll have him check in when he wakes.” He said standing up and fiddling with something on the desk just to keep his hands busy and an excuse not to have to keep looking at T’Challa’s intense stare.

     “Believe me or don’t. It’s doesn’t matter, I just figured I’d save them some time in the mud.” He finished flippantly and ended the call with a thought. He wasn’t about to admit he still cared about them or their worry. That was weakness, and a major one considering their betrayal. He pushed all thoughts of the conversation and his old teammates away and went back to working on the code for the portal. It would be easy to make it able to connect to other universes now he just needed to tweak it a bit more.         

        Steve opened his eyes about an hour later feeling safe for a moment until reality came crashing back. This was his room at the tower but he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was in Nigeria, on a mission, and shouldn’t be in the tower, not after what happened between him and Tony. Had Tony captured him? He remembered a building falling on him and after Tony was talking to him. He said the team was alright. Steve figured that without any cuffs on him and with the door to his room open he probably wasn’t a prisoner.

       Though he got up and walked out of his old room swiftly just to be sure he could. Nothing happened, except for the pain of moving so quickly while not fully healed and being so dizzy he almost fell over. He leaned against the hallway wall trying to breathe properly as his ribs protested, but now he wasn’t sure what to do. Should he look for Tony for answers or should get out of here as quickly as possible? The soldier deliberated, a few months ago it would have been an easy choice, everything was easier then. Looking down he realized first he should go back into his old room and find some clothes. Steve was a little surprised to find everything was right where he’d left it.

       After he was dressed he squared his shoulders coming to a decision and started slowly toward Tony’s lab. He wanted answers and he knew where the person most likely to have them would be. As even when the world was turned on its head Steve was sure that the one thing that wouldn’t change is where he could find the genius that had been his friend.

      He was moving slowly down the stairs trying not to jar his healing ribs, as his whole body ached terribly especially his shoulder, so he was pretty sure it had been dislocated recently. His ears worked fine though and as he came closer to the lab he started to make out Tony’s dry drawl. It was the tone he used when he had to repeat something to someone he didn’t like but was treating like a partially stupid piece of furniture because for whatever reason he couldn’t tell them straight up to fuck off, yet.

     “And I told you Ross, I don’t know where Rogers and his merry band of miscreants are,” Steve froze when he realized Tony was talking to General Ross. “and if you had any proof I had anything to do with the break out at the Raft you would have already taken it to the UN and tried to bury me. So if there is nothing else.” Tony paused ready to have the repetitive conversation over with.    

      “There is actually, Stark. Earlier today Rogers and his team infiltrated Nigeria and Rogers was caught in a building collapse.” Ross paused leadingly as if he expected Tony to give him information. Steve stayed still listening to every word and wondering if Tony would say something about him.

       “Is there a question there Ross?” Tony asked raising an eyebrow Steve couldn’t see but could practically hear. Ross’s scowl deepened at the lack of information, he was always trying to pump Tony for intel not that he ever got anything useful.

       “The strange part is about an hour ago his team stopped digging, why would they do that Stark?” Ross demanded. Tony was not impressed.

       “As flattering as it is that you think I’m your own personal magic eight ball I can’t actually tell you the secrets of the universe General. Now if you’ll excuse me I actually have work to do.” Tony ended the call and Steve didn’t think he’d ever heard Tony sound so ready to get off the phone with someone. But why after everything was Tony protecting them, protecting him? Even if he didn’t know where the others were Tony knew where he was.

      “Come sit down before you fall down Rogers.” Tony stated. Startling Steve out of his thoughts, it was a little disconcerting to have Tony calling him by his last name. He hadn’t even looked away from whatever he was doing on his main monitor. All Steve could tell was that it was a really long complex coding algorithm. He hesitantly came into the lab and sat on one of the more comfortable wheelie chairs a little ways away from Tony but still in easy talking distance. He really did still feel horrible, it was a small miracle he made it down the stairs without falling.

       “Why didn’t you tell him I was here?” Steve tried to demand an answer in his Captain Voice, which he thought usually worked. Tony didn’t even glance at him.

       “Your team is fine, and I will have you back to Wakanda soon. Just sit there a few minutes.” Tony said totally ignoring Steve’s actual question while giving him so many more he now wanted to ask. Like how he knew he had been in Wakanda, or how he got to the tower, or why Tony seemed to be helping him? Maybe that one he already knew, Tony was always helping even when it hurt him. Tony stood up with a few more key strokes turning to face the opposite direction from Steve and walking towards some kind of machine.

      “How did you-“ Steve started to ask one of his many questions but was cut off before he could get much of it out.

     “Friday open a line to Wakanda. Ghost protocol.” Tony ordered while disconnecting a few wires and changing them for different, thicker ones. Almost completely ignoring that Steve was even there. There was barely two rings before King T’Challa was looking at Steve via video chat.

      “T’Challa is everything alright? Are the others okay?” Steve asked turning to the screen while still trying to keep Tony in his sight. T’Challa seemed to relax and his team stepped into the camera view.

      “We’re all accounted for Steve. We were only missing you. When Stark called and said he had you and we could stop looking we didn’t know what to do.” Sam stepped up, before Natasha explained more.

      “I told them to stop. We weren’t finding anything and Stark didn’t have anything to gain from telling us you were with him but possibly something to lose as he hadn’t reported it as far as my sources know.” Natasha said. While Steve was grateful for some answers he still wasn’t getting the ones he wanted which he suspected could only come from Tony. He glanced back at the engineer noting that he was out of the cameras view and seemed to be ignoring them.

      “It’s fine Nat. It was the right call. I’m glad you made it back safely.” Steve stated looking over his team carefully for any injuries. Other than the usual cuts and bruises they looked fine.

     “Do you know where you are?” Clint asked frowning. “Need a rescue?” Tony didn’t look his way as Steve glanced at the genius again but he was sure he could feel Tony rolling his eyes.

     “I think-“ Steve cut off, whipping his head around as something sparked loudly in the direction Tony was before the sound of a machine humming to life.

      “Shut it down Jarvis.” Tony stated. Surprising Steve with the name he thought now only lived through Vision. At first he thought Tony misspoke but then there was a reply. “Shutting down Sir.” Jarvis’s voice came through the speakers that Steve couldn’t see and Vision was nowhere in sight.

      “He’s fine Barton. I’ll have him back to you in fifteen minutes, give or take. T’Challa do keep your more trigger happy guards off the roof would you. Thanks.” Tony had walked over and finally made eye contact but it was with the screen and not Steve, and he didn’t wait for an answer. As soon as he finished the video went blank, and Tony sat down going back to the programming he’d been working on.

       “Tony, aren’t we in New York?” Steve asked hesitantly. He was sure he was, that had been his room in the New York tower, and while he didn’t really try to take in the view earlier he could see the skyline out his old window. How was Tony going to get him back to Wakanda in fifteen minutes? He didn’t seem like he was lying and if he was he should have been going for a longer deadline to give him more time not a shorter one.  

    Tony stilled, he didn’t really want Steve to know what he was doing but he had kind of blown that already. It was safest to send him back through the portal, if he got caught trying leave the US before Tony’s plan to get him acquitted was finished Steve would be thrown into some deep hole even he would have trouble finding the soldier in. Slumping his shoulders Tony gave a small nod.

      “Then how…?” Steve trailed off frowning, he didn’t even remember coming here and it apparently hadn’t been long since the building went down. Ross said earlier today, and he’d been sleeping a little while. And now Tony had finally had given him one answer but still had yet to make eye contact which was really starting to bother Steve.

       “Complicated. You’ll see.” Tony stated with what seemed as few words as possible and keeping his eyes on the computer screen, his hands flying over the holographic keyboard. Steve was starting to get frustrated with the lack of answers and the fact that Tony wouldn’t _look_ at him! It was bothering him more than he could explain that Tony couldn’t even look at him. He felt guilty over what he’d done to Tony in Siberia. He knew he had hurt Tony, he sent a letter to say he was sorry and a phone in case Tony needed help. Part of him knew that wasn’t enough.   

     There was an uncomfortable silence for about ten minutes. Steve knew Tony usually broke those because he hated the silence but he wasn’t. And Steve would normally demand to know what was wrong because he knew Tony felt like he always needed to do things himself, but now he couldn’t. He knew what was wrong and he didn’t know if he could fix it. He wasn’t sure that what happened between them could be fixed.

       “Alright start it up J.” Tony finally spoke. Steve turned to where Tony was watching and saw the circular machine Tony had been working on hum to life. A light blue shine illuminated the center, like a portal. His head whipped back to Tony in shock. He knew how Tony shied away from portals and space since the whole Chitauri invasion, and if Tony actually showed that much it meant he was downright terrified of them.

       “Timeline on the power source?” Tony asked ignoring the look Steve was sending his way. He couldn’t stand to see Steve now that he was awake and not just because he didn’t want Steve to see his eyes turning black as he used extreamis. With that thought he grabbed some sun glasses half buried under some papers on his work table and slipped them on. His hangover glasses were even more useful now.

      “With the new configurations the current power source will hold for fourteen point two minutes and counting.” Jarvis answered. “But this version of the portal has never been tested it would be wise to send something through first. May I suggest Mr. Rogers?” Jarvis spoke without inflection and Steve froze for a moment wondering if Tony would actually use him as a guinea pig.

      “Maybe another time J, for now this will have to do.” Tony refused but was smirking as one of his armors flew through the glowing blue portal. Steve decided he didn’t want to know if Tony or his creation were serious.  

      Tony watched the readings through the armor carefully. It made it through to the other side and all the scans say there was nothing that it went through that a normal human body shouldn’t be able to handle. He knew he should do more testing before using it himself but honestly he couldn’t take Steve staring at him that long. And the last run he’d had even less testing. Now for the hard part.

      “Alright, come on.” Tony reached his hand to Steve on auto pilot and Steve grabbed on pulling himself up without seeming to think either. As soon as he was on his feet though they both realized what they’d done and pulled back quickly. Steve stumbled as his ribs shot throbbing pain through him and Tony reached out again to steady him and steeled himself to not pull away as he ducked his head under Steve’s arm.

     “Come on, your team is looking trigger happy around my armor.” Tony grumbled keeping his head down. It was not good for him to be so close to Steve, too many feelings he shouldn’t have. So if he had to hold Steve up he sure as hell wasn’t going to look at him too. Helping Steve walk through the portal was starting to feel like old times when they would help each other home from a mission, and that was just too close to what had been and what would never be again.

     Tony closed his eyes behind the sunglasses and forced himself not to drag his feet going through the portal. Regretfully he was sure Steve could feel him tensing. They came out the other side of the portal and Tony opened his eyes to see his old team surrounding them and his armor only a few feet to his right.

     “T’Challa.” Tony nodded to the king not wanting to greet anyone else. He cursed himself for the regretful feeling he had as he handed Steve off to Sam who had warily approached to retrieve his captain.

     “Mr. Stark. I must thank you for what you’ve done. And I welcome you to Wakanda. You are free to look around if you wish.” T’Challa surprised him with the invitation. No Stark has been allowed in Wakanda since his father stole some vibranium from its outskirts which ended up making Cap’s shield. Actually outsiders weren’t normally allowed in Wakanda’s borders at all. It was a show of trust.

       “Thanks. But I am on a bit of a time limit.” Tony pointed his thumb over his shoulder gesturing to the portal and smiled slightly trying to show he appreciated the gesture. To the outside world Wakanda was a third world country with little technology but Tony knew the truth. It was amazing, the city was had so much beautiful technology based in vibranium that Tony knew he could lose himself in how everything worked for a very long time. But he just couldn’t bring himself to stay while his old team looked at him like he was about to fire on them or something.

      “That’s going to close in a few minutes, and I really don’t want to have to explain how I got on the other side of the planet.” He smiled cheekily, denying the invite diplomatically. Of course he could just have Vision replace the power source when he was ready to leave and have Jarvis fire it up but he really didn’t think he’d be welcome here. His team still wasn’t looking at him very friendly.

     “Perhaps another time then.” T’Challa nodded with a polite smile almost as if he understood. Tony felt happy, something he hadn’t felt in quiet awhile as the king made it an open invitation.

      “I’ll keep that in mind.” Tony smiled faintly and nodded back before turning around to go back through the portal refusing to look directly at any of his old teammates even with his highly polarized sun glasses hiding his eyes.

     “Wait!” Steve called. Tony stopped and turn his head to Steve where he and the others had been watching his exchange with the king, finally taking in Steve’s form from behind the limited safety of his sunglasses. “Thanks. Thanks for coming for me.” Steve looked at him almost like he’d hoped Tony would stay awhile, he was the only one though. Tony felt his anger flare. Steve, always the good boy, thanking people, and always acting so virtuous like he couldn’t do anything else but be perfectly polite. Where the hell was that guy when Tony was trying to keep their team together? Where was he when Steve was beating him into the ground with the assassin that murder his parents?

       Tony nodded stiffly barely controlling his temper and turned around walking straight through the portal without flinching or bothering to close his eyes. He was too angry to be scared. Vaguely he felt Jarvis take over the armor for him and walk it through the portal behind him. He shut the portal down himself, extreamis doing what he wanted with barely a thought. And then buried himself so far into whatever work he was behind in and multitasking with work on the portal so that he couldn’t think of anything else. Like how much he’d like to punch Rogers in his self-righteous face. Or worse that he missed the bastard maybe just as much.

     “Did he look younger?” It was Natasha who spoke first after the portal closed and Tony was gone. Everyone looked at her a moment thinking about it.

     “He kinda did.” Barton shrugged “But what I want to know is how he pulled that off in the first place, or why.” He said gesturing to where the portal had been.

     “Really? Well what I want to know is what you idiots were thinking?” a voice from the entrance of the balcony made everyone turn surprised to see a man they thought had been dead more than once. “I leave for a couple of months and you dumb bastards screw up the world.” Fury deadpanned at them leaning against the wall.

     “We thought you were dead, again.” Clint deadpanned back, though Fury paid him no mind.

     “My death has been exaggerated obviously. However not even the dead could miss you tearing the world apart with your political differences.” Fury glared right at their leader and Steve felt his hackles rise.

      “It wasn’t right. They wanted to control us, tell us who we could and couldn’t save. There wasn’t-“ Steve started on his righteous spiel that was starting to sound repetitive even to him, but Fury cut him off.

     “I don’t really give a fuck Captain.” He stated blandly. “Stark could handle any political shit he needed to but as I understand it you refused to follow his lead in a game he was born to play and ran off, recruiting your team here, into your mess, blowing a disagreement up into an international incident and dissolving the Avengers. Quiet a spectacular feat for a week.” Fury was pissed apparently.

     “Stark wanted us to settle, to sign the Accords that would give us and others like us to government control!” Steve tried not to growl. It was like no one understood you couldn’t settle on things like this. That you had to plant yourself like a tree, like Peggy said.

    “Stark could have had the pull to change those Accords into anything he god damn wanted if you had stood by him.” Fury sounded like he was talking to a particularly stupid individual. “Even without you though he is changing them bit by bit.” Steve was struck silent for a moment, could they really have changed them, together? But they still would have wanted to lock up Bucky, right? Fury continued before Steve could think of what to say.

     “But the worst thing you could have done, you did, and I’m not sure it can be fixed.” Fury paused looking away from them all. “Tony Stark has always been a wild card. That he came out of that cave in Afghanistan a hero instead of dead or a psychopath was a miracle. That he worked with you all on a team and even funded the team after SHIELD fell was better than I hoped for.” Fury noticed Natasha’s eyes widen when she realized what he was getting to. “And then you Rogers, betrayed him, and you all followed him.” Fury looked around the group as most of them exploded in arguments of how it was Tony who threw them in the Raft or in Steve’s case signed the Accords.    

       He let them argue for moment with a blank face. “You all done?” He continued even though Steve and Clint reopened their mouths to defend themselves or damn Tony. “The truth is you all apparently don’t know what Stark had been protecting you from.” So he explained in the most horrifying details he could about the ‘camps’ some of the governments wanted to put them and others with heightened abilities in. About how many others there were that wouldn’t be able to defend themselves if it came to that. About the precautions he took to protect Clint’s family. And about the people they were meant to be protecting that were afraid of them, or even hated them for the loved ones they have lost in the collateral damage from their battles.

     “Stark is many things, but he is loyal to a fault. Until that is, his so called friends turn on him.” None of them objected this time even though it looked like some of them wanted to. “Romanoff knows this, but it wasn’t in Stark’s file for any of you to read do to in-depth and repeated hacking,” Fury rolled his eye. “but the last person that was personally close to Stark and tried to kill him ended up fried, as in heavily electrocuted and very dead.” He stated bluntly.

     “Now he apparently has overcome any fear the Chitauri instilled in him concerning portals. You all were meant to be anchors to each other. Keep each other from spiraling. He doesn’t have an anchor anymore, not even Colonel Rhodes, as the friend that kept him balanced before all of you has his own pressing problems now.” He looked pointedly at Sam who looked away in guilt.

       “It wasn’t Sam’s fault. It was an accident, we never meant for that to happen.” Steve jumped to defend his friend. As he heard the words though he knew they were hollow. Meant to or not James Rhodes may never walk again and could have easily died in the fighting. Any of them could have. 

     “And yet Captain, it did happen.” Fury stared at him waiting for Steve to make an excuse. Steve didn’t, there was nothing he could say. So Fury continued.

     “The only hope I have that you haven’t turned our greatest asset into our greatest enemy is that he is still helping you fools.” Fury finished turning away from them and walking into the palace. Leaving them to rethink everything that happened and everything that was happening at the same time that they didn’t know about. The others were lost in their own thoughts but Steve went after Fury needing to know, “What do you mean?”

       T’Challa listened carefully knowing he wasn’t really part of the conversation but by the end he thought that Nick Fury, the man he had let into his kingdom to hopefully re-recruit the Avengers and take them where they would stop using his country as a home base, was either afraid of Tony Stark or afraid for him. Probably both.


	3. A New World

**Chapter 3: A New World**

        It was a week later that Tony had finally gotten all his affairs in order, and the portal ready to use. Well the portal had been ready (and this time with more testing) barely two days after he returned Rogers to Wakanda. He had altered his arc reactor technology so that it had the right output to power the portal even to another universe and still sustain itself so that he could theoretically keep the portal open as long as he liked. Not that he was going to go around leaving portals to other worlds open.

     Which is how he ended up exchanging a few encrypted emails with Reed Richards and Jane Foster. He couldn’t go around leaving portals open until he decided to go back through them. He needed to be able to open a portal from the other side without having to make a new one from whatever world he was in. After they answered a few _theoretical_ questions for him though everything went quickly. Basically he just needed to get a signal through the universes, long distance calling style, so that he could signal the portal to open and tell it where.

      What took the longest was everything else. He had to make sure his PR and legal teams were still making progress picking apart the Accords and build defense cases for the Avengers, he finally had a solid plan to get rid of Ross in place (he wasn’t going to even see it coming), he told Peter to stay out of trouble because he was going to be unreachable for a little while. (Not that he thought the kid would listen.) Then he checked in on Clints’s family, who he had already set up in a nice safe house months ago when this whole shit storm began. And he wasn’t going to leave until he made the upgrade to Rhodey’s leg brace he had been working on.

      Tony looked over the plans of the new Stark phone he designed and sent it along with the new prosthetics line he had been working on to Pepper. She was really in need of something to appease the board of directors. The company’s stock had been wavering with all the bad press but she would have something to use now to show that Stark Tech was still the best and with some of the prosthetics donated to vets they would have some good press for a change.

    With that done he turned to the portal. With barely a thought he activated it and threw Steve’s shield through. If his calculations were right then it should hit Steve right in the stomach, if he was lucky it might even knock him over. So he was petty, he was giving the shield back (which had nothing at all to do with Steve being hurt without it), he could be petty. After all he could just melt the thing down and make it into something extraordinary for himself. But he was returning it, so really he was being mature.

      He shut the portal down as soon as the shield was through, he didn’t want to talk to Steve, or see him. It was time for his vacation. Tony smirked as he watched the portal, his armor minus his helmet forming around him as it started up. He had set the portal to open to a world at least similar to his own in that a Tony Stark would have to have existed there at some point. Mostly because he didn’t want to be dumped in Jurassic park and because using himself as a base was easy. It had nothing what so ever to do with wanting to see if another him had done better.

     “Alright J, take care of things for me until I get back! And don’t tell anyone where I went, I mean it. If there is a real emergency you know how to contact me.” Tony felt the thrill he had been missing for a while going through him. A new world. New discoveries. This was what he lived for.

     “As you wish sir.” Jarvis replied. With Jarvis taking care of things Tony had no regrets. His helmet formed around his head completing his armor and he flew head first through the blue glow into another world grinning like mad.

     Going through the portal still made his body tense and gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach but it wasn’t nearly as bad since he had dropped Steve in Wakanda and once he was on the other side it was almost easy to put behind him. He came out over an ocean next to a city that had a very similar look to New York. He could already see the differences though, it was more futuristic. More sleek lines in the sky scrapers and it looked like there was some similarities to some of his father’s old plans. Maybe in this world he had used some of the designs to build up the city?

       Shaking off all the thoughts he ordered his helmet off and breathed the sea air in deeply as he took in a new world with his own eyes. It was wonderful. He felt free in a way he hadn’t since the first time he blasted into the sky with the Mark II. He had no responsibilities in this world, he hadn’t hurt anybody here and there wasn’t anybody here he was attached to and needed to protect. There was still blood on his hands, but at least here he could pretend there wasn’t.

     After a moment of looking around from his high vantage point with his own eyes and feeling the wind tousle his hair Tony connected to the wifi signals he could feel in the air. Extreamis helped him sift through all the information quickly to find what his counterpart’s status was. He was surprised to find his counterpart was still very young here, nineteen, but there were already articles on Iron Man and-

      Tony’s helmet automatically pulled around him cutting his research short as he sensed something nearing his physical body through some electronics connect to an air ship. No, not an air ship, it felt more familiar… like it was this world’s helicarrier. So much for being subtle. Tony thought as he waited for whatever this world’s version of SHEILD was called to approach him (hopefully they weren’t infested with Hydra). Vaguely he thought of running and hiding from them, partly to annoy them and partly because he didn’t really want to deal with them but they were the easiest way to get some answers. Or rather breaking through their security to get answers would be easier if he was on board. 

         “Iron Man, you are requested to meet with Commander Fury immediately.” A loud speaker from the ship ordered him. Not requested, because he knew that was a load of shit. If they knew he wasn’t this world’s Iron Man then they would probably be telling him to ‘stand down’ though. So he nodded and flew up to where the deck was. He was escorted by what seemed like two normal agents through the hellicarrier to Fury’s office which was in the same spot as Tony remembered. Actually from what he could tell from his walk through it was a lot like the previous layout SHIELD had from his father before he had upgraded them. And it was still called SHIELD here if the logo on the uniforms were anything to go on.

      “Changed the suit again Tony?” Was the first thing Fury said once the office door shut behind the armor. He shrugged not knowing what kind of relationship his counterpart had with Fury if he was calling him by his first name, though that might be because his counterpart was nineteen.

      “Well it better be up to snuff. There was some kind of distortion that disrupted air waves. I’m sure you noticed as you were right on top of it.” Fury paused as if waiting for him to give him some insight. Tony shrugged again knowing that wasn’t going to save him for long as Fury’s only visible eye narrowed in suspicion. “We need to know if this is another visitor from another time. And if they have hostile intentions. So I’ll ask, do you?” Fury commanded him to answer. Tony knew the jig was up before Fury started the sentence as the old pirate had pushed a security button under the desk. Of course he’d cut it off before anyone was alerted.

      Tony reached up to his helmet with a sigh and put most of his connection to extreamis on the back burner so that his eyes wouldn’t be black and creepy. He activated the helmet to retract while pretending that he had pulled it off manually. He wasn’t sure how much they knew but it was always good to have a few surprises.

       “Not really Fury.” Tony put on his best flippant smirk. “Mostly just looking for something interesting to do. Not everyone is looking to take over the world, do you even know how much paperwork that would entail?” he put on his best not-worth-my-time face and caught the split second of Fury’s shock as he realized he was talking to an older Tony Stark. “And no I’m not from any part of your timeline, or your world.” He finished and decided he’d wait for Fury to say something. He didn’t have to wait long.

      “Then what world are you from?” Fury started with the obvious follow up question though it seemed like a stupid one. Tony raised one incredulous eyebrow.

      “Mine. What, do you think I name them? Stark1, Stark Palooza, Stark World, you know that’s not a bad idea.” He looked away from Fury as if he had lost interest in talking to him and was thinking up multiple ridiculous names. Which was only partly true. Fury seemed to twitch, whether it was from trying to hide his amusement or irritation Tony didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask. “But whatever, you’re cock blocking my vacation. So why don’t we do this the easy way, you tell me what you want and I’ll tell you if I’ll go along with it or to piss off?” Tony stated with such casualness that he would almost pat himself on the back. He could totally do inter-planetary/multi-universal relations. If his world’s Fury ever heard of this his death would probably not be subtle.

        Fury was silent for long enough that his eye staring was starting to unnerve Tony. Not that he was about to look away first. Nope, that would be admitting defeat. Instead he smiled cheekily. “I suppose that since agents haven’t come running in here yet that means you have extreamis and disconnected the signal.” Fury stated blandly, it wasn’t even a question so Tony didn’t bother answering it. Though if his smile was cheeky before it was downright impish now.

      In another world Steve sat on the edge of his bed staring at the star in the middle of his shield. It had been a week since Tony had brought him back safe and sound to Wakanda, while hardly speaking a word to him. Today though a portal had just appeared in his room while he was getting dressed. At first he thought Tony was going to come through and hurried to get his pants the rest of the way on. Before he could grab his shirt though his shield came flying out of the portal with enough force that when he reactively caught it he was knocked backward onto his bed, the wind knocked out of him.

      The portal was closed by the time he sat back up. So Steve looked down to his shield and spotted a sticky note on the middle. He recognized it as Tony’s hand writing, but really, who else is going to be making portals in the middle of his room and throwing priceless shields at him? The note was short and read simply:

  _Try not to get shot. I’m on vacation._

       Steve smirked and shook his head lightly. It was something he could imagine Tony saying, though he couldn’t really remember Tony ever actually going on vacation. Something was always happening and Tony was always needed. Though most of the other Avengers were able to get away because Tony was better suited to controlling public views, and fund raising, and was always needed on missions while Thor was gone so that there was air support. Frowning now, Steve really hoped Tony was actually getting that vacation.

      As for the shield he really wasn’t sure he deserved it anymore, but what he had done during the ‘Civil War’ as they were calling it now, affected Tony the most. So if it was Tony who was giving it back to him and clearly because he was concerned about Steve getting hurt if the note was anything to go by… he would use it. To keep him and the team safe as he was sure Tony intended. He needed to repaint it though, he didn’t much feel like ‘Captain America’ anymore.

       Back in the other universe Tony let Commander Fury lead him through the halls of the helicarrier, his helmet back on. Fury had kind of just stared a hole into him for a while after he revealed himself to be an alternate dimension Tony Stark. It was unnerving but Tony had faced down alien gods, an army from across the universe falling from the sky, and when it was really important, Pepper. He could ignore this alternate Fury staring a hole in him. Eventually Fury broke the silence.

      “I’d like you to take a look at a project.” The Commander stated. He stood up and walked through the door without waiting for Tony to agree to anything. Tony rolled his eyes at the display but followed, his helmet coming back into place, just in case someone wanted to shoot him. His curiosity would make him want to know what Fury was talking about eventually as Fury no doubt knew it would.

     However he had now been following Fury for five minutes. Tony knew the layout to this helicarrier now thanks to extreamis and the fact it had barely changed from his father’s old layout. So he was sure Fury was taking him the long way to whatever project he was talking about just to be annoying. He wanted to act bratty, like he hadn’t been able to in years because things were so close to blowing up that even being obnoxious could seriously harm his cause, and his cause was protecting the Avengers and those like them.

        Now though, this wasn’t his world. He didn’t represent anyone. Not even his counterpart really, as it seemed the more he searched through data bases he could see his younger counterpart had a much different life. He would be a different person.

     “Fuuury.” Tony whined, there was no other word for it. “I’m bored, are we there yet?” okay that last part was a bit over the top. Tony couldn’t help but smirk at being free to be whoever the hell he wanted. Fury’s almost inaudible sigh was a nice bonus. Just as Tony was about to try to pester a response out of him again Fury stopped at a door and started the unlocking process of placing his hand on a scanner as blue light scanned his face.

      “Commander Nicholas Fury recognized.” A computerized voice stated, and simultaneously made Tony frown at the lack of intelligence. If it was an AI it had no personality, if it wasn’t… well then it would make him feel like he was ten years in the past. Which didn’t really fit with the futuristic sky scrapers outside. Though maybe he was just bias, he had his AIs for a long time but he had only given a rudimentary one to his world’s SHIELD just before its collapse do to Nazi. He was distracted with his thoughts enough that he didn’t realized what was in front of him until he was fully in the room and the door had closed. 

      Tony stopped dead. There was a large iceberg and inside almost curled in on himself was Steve.

     “Steve.” He barely whispered shocked. At first he wanted to scream. To shout ‘ _What did you do to him?!_ ’ but this wasn’t his Steve and even if it had been he _shouldn’t_ care. He _would_ though. He would smash Steve out with his bare hands if he had to, if it was _his_ Steve, but he _shouldn’t_. Instead he pushed all those thoughts away and was grateful not for the first time that his armor had hid most his reactions.

     “So you knew him in your world then?” Fury prodded. Tony thought about his reply carefully, but in the end decided it didn’t matter. This wasn’t his world, and if this Fury wanted to know… he would tell him. Not that he had any intention of going into detail.

      “I did. My father searched for him for many years, eventually he set up an ongoing SHIELD expedition that would go out every year and search. They found him frozen and thought he was dead and brought back what they thought was a body anyway, government secrets and all. Though it wasn’t long before they realized he had faint vital signs as you seem to have.” Tony shifted so that in the suit it seemed like he was looking at Fury but he was cataloging everything from Steve’s vitals to the old uniform he was frozen in.

       “Do you know how he was de-thawed?” Fury asked pressing for info, disguised as an innocent question. Tony smirked, laughing just loud enough to be heard through his suit.

        “I didn’t say he was. But yes, I can wake him up.” Tony mentally order his helmet to retract so Fury could see his smirk. “I know you like your mind games, but sometimes I wish you’d just ask.” His eyes and smirk softening into something older, more tired, but resigned to the ways of the world. This Fury looked slightly younger than the Fury in his world but still watched him like with calculating eyes he had seen before, assessing him and then nodding slowly.

       “I will keep that in mind.” Fury finally stated as though he had decided he had found whatever he had been looking for in Tony. “Then I will as you say ‘just ask’. Will you wake him up?” Fury stated plainly. Something Tony could never remember the commander’s counterpart doing unless he was saying ‘Shut up, Stark.’

        Tony turned away from Fury’s eye to look back at Steve. He took a slow, deep breath. He knew this was coming from the moment Fury brought him in here. The strategic part of his mind was telling him not to, that he should just leave the stubborn, unwilling to compromise Captain on ice. That it would save his counterpart a lot of heartache, headaches, work, and stress… but even before Fury asked he knew he couldn’t. That even though this wasn’t his Steve he couldn’t leave him like that. So much for his vacation from Captain Asshole. It seemed no matter how far he went, even a universe away, Steve was there.

        “Yes.” He sighed, finally answering Fury. The commander nodded.

       “Then I’ll leave you to it. Send me a list of anything you need. I’m sure you know how.” Fury ordered as he swept out the room leaving Tony alone with a frozen Captain America. Through extreamis Tony knew Fury had set two guards on the door, and that cameras were outside the door as well as watching him in the lab. He mentally shrugged, for all Fury knew he was an enemy. It would be more odd if he wasn’t being watched.

       He stepped out of the Iron Man suit, pointed two fingers up and twisted his wrist in a gesture that meant ‘sentry’ mode. He didn’t need to do the gesture anymore as he could just think it through extreamis but it was habit and kind of fun to do. The suit walked to the end of the desk, where it would be out of the way and stood vigil as Tony himself sat down and started going through all the information on Steve’s status that was on the computer.

      While he wasn’t on the original project to wake his Steve up he may have taken a look at the reports on it after the team was formed, and got a general idea of the process. So in just over seven minutes he was sending a list to Fury stating what he would need to safely wake up Captain America. It only took him that long because he wanted to check all the variables, just in case something was different.

       Kicking his feet up onto the desk he waited for the supplies to arrive. After two point four minutes he got bored and closed his eyes so that the cameras wouldn’t catch his eyes going black while he used extreamis to look through this world’s history and any information he could find on Steve Rogers or Captain America.

     Tony frowned when he got through the encryption on Project Rebirth. It was mostly the same, vita rays, Dr. Erskine and his formula, and a Dr. Stark. The weird part was it was Dr. Howard Stark Sr. instead of just Howard Stark or Jr. unless it was a typo it meant his father never worked on Project rebirth. That it was his _grandfather_. Quickly pushing aside the project Tony diverted to DMV records and birth records to find that the father of Tony Stark was born in 1970 which was almost thirty years after Project Rebirth in 1941. Making his father in this world forty-nine, only two years older than him… Not that Tony looked his age, as extreamis had practically aged him back to his very early thirties maybe even late twenties.

      Even so this was just weird. Not only was his father alive here and close to his age, but he had never met Captain America. Tony pushed away any thought of how his childhood would have been different if Howard had never met Steve. He didn’t want to know, it wouldn’t change anything anyway. He just hoped he wouldn’t meet the old man before he left.

      Of course just at that moment Howard Stark walked through the door followed by the equipment Tony had ordered. He felt the urge to jump up and glare at the man with wary contempt. Like an enemy had just walked in. Shoving the reaction down as far as he could he kept his feet on the desk and tried his damned-ist to act like the man had no effect on him. Yes, he knew this man wasn’t actually his father but it didn’t stop him from wanting to be an ass to him.

       “I suppose Fury sent you to make sure I don’t break the golden boy.” Tony questioned rhetorically after staring at the man for a moment. While he really wanted to smack the commander for sending in his counterpart’s father there probably isn’t that many people that had a chance of understanding what he was doing, let alone on short notice. It had been twenty-two point four minutes since he sent Fury his list, Howard had probably already been on the airship.  

       “Ah, guilty.” His not-father smiled slightly. As Howard stared back his eyes flickering all over Tony as if he was trying to take in every detail, or find differences between him and the man’s son. Tony rolled his eyes as he got up to check the equipment. He would probably be cataloging and comparing every detail of the man to his own father if he wasn’t trying to avoid all eye contact.

     “Well then, try not slow me down.” He stated flippantly. Mentally he winced, knowing the backhanded challenge to a man he didn’t know could only point to his anger at his own father. He pretended it didn’t mean anything by completely ignoring Howard was in the room, as he set up everything to wake Steve. When he was done he turned around and acted slightly surprised Howard was still there. As if he was unimportant enough to forget about.

      The man was just standing in the same place staring at him. Like he was some kind of puzzle to be solved. Tony only raised an eyebrow incredulously. “If you’re going to be useless you could at least sit as you stare at me.” Tony deadpanned, really he wasn’t hiding his dislike for his father very well, so why bother. His words at least seemed to startle the other man out of his staring.    

      “Oh, sorry. This is all just, a bit… weird.” Howard finally settled on, showing a nervous tick by shifting on his feet and grabbing the edges of his front pockets with his hands. The action settle Tony a little. He was seventeen when his parents died but he knew tells even then and his father would never show one, that was weakness. The only tells you show are the ones you _want_ your opponent to see. This man may look like his father on the surface, but now that he was actually looking at the man… it was impossible to mistake this more open, and slightly nervous man for the father he knew. Plus he actually said ‘Sorry’, Starks don’t apologies. At least not easily.  

        He waved his hand in a gesture that he hope meant ‘its fine’ even in this world. Before he turned back to the laser he just assembled and pulled on some black goggles to protect his eyes, throwing the second pair to Howard as he started up the laser. He cut carefully around Steve, making sure he wouldn’t just fall out and break him. He couldn’t just cut Steve out of the thing and be done with it, but he needed him out of the excess of the iceberg to start warming him up slowly. So he was cutting one inch, or in certain parts more, around Steve’s entire body.     

     It took twenty-eight point two minutes to free Steve from the majority of the iceberg and at six point four minutes Howard had walked around to stand on Tony’s side, watching as the laser worked and looking at the half scribbled notes Tony had left on the desk. The notes were practically unreadable to anyone but Tony himself as they jumped with his thought process and he only wrote down enough to trigger what he was thinking about. Of course everything he had written down was to do with this project anyway so it wasn’t like he needed to worry about Howard reading it. Still it kind of annoyed him that his notes were being checked. He ignored the man in favor of not accidently taking off Steve’s arm with a high powered laser.

      Once Steve was finally de-thawed enough to lie down on the bed Tony had gotten brought in, hooked up to some fluids and had some heating pads under him Tony finally sat back down to wait. There was nothing more to do at the moment. Steve would have to raise his body temperature before Tony could even turn up the heating pads from the low setting as heating him up any faster could damage him. While Tony was pretty sure Steve would just heal any damage made, it would hurt, and Tony didn’t want to chance that it wouldn’t heal.

       Howard was looking over all of Steve’s vitals and the equipment. Making sure he knew exactly what, and how Tony had stabilized Steve out of the ice. Tony rolled his eyes, it wasn’t like they were going to have to revive another super soldier from solid ice. At least he hoped not.

     “About how long till he wakes up?” Howard asked still looking over the data on a computer screen. Tony tossed some figures around, but it wasn’t really something to calculate. In his own world they had sedated Steve until they could set up that fake ‘40s room, so he woke up when they stopped drugging him.

     “Can’t say exactly, probably before his core temperature even stabilizes. He’s stubborn like that.” Tony replied flippantly after a moment, without turning to Howard. At his reply though Howard finally turned back to him.

     “You know him? In your world, I mean.” Howard asked interested. Tony reactively wanted to say ‘I thought I did.’ But that was a little too close to _feelings_ , and those were a no-no especially with Howard. It really didn’t matter that it was wasn’t the same Howard, he was not going to start a conversation that involved high level emotions. Or any emotions for that matter.

       “I did.” Tony kept his answer short and feigned interest in monitoring the equipment attached to Steve. He knew exactly what the readings were. Howard though, _this_ Howard was apparently a Captain America fan too. Tony didn’t think the older man was even blinking as he glanced from the man on the table and then went back to staring at the side of Tony’s head, since Tony was studiously _not_ looking at the man that wasn’t his father start to fan-girl.

      “What’s he like?” Howard ask looking like he was trying hard not to lean out of his seat. Tony rolled his eyes, of course Howard would be Cap’s biggest fan, even without ever meeting him, or being a part of Rebirth.

        “Self-righteous,” Tony paused stopping what probably would have been a long list because his next word was going to be ‘patriotic’. And it seemed like that no longer applied to his Steve. Then he made the mistake of looking at Howard’s expecting face, which was falling into confusion.

      With a sigh Tony continued. “He is loyal to those he cares about,” (So long as your name is Bucky Barnes), “He has a terrible poker face but is a good strategist. Has an almost photographic memory, can bank that shield using just about anything, better than anyone…” Tony shrugged not wanting to continue. He had started listing Steve’s abilities instead of his personality. Howard was making him feel confined, he needed to get away from the other man and his questions. This Steve wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon anyway.

      Turning his mind inward for a moment he used extreamis to look around him and out the door as he got to his feet and walked to the door. It opened just in time for him to continue walking through. He ignored the guards that had been standing outside the door as they started to flank him while he walked down the hall, as long as they weren’t trying to stop him he didn’t care. Howard looked confused from what he could see through the camera from the lab but wasn’t following him.    

Two hours later he was in one of the Shield break rooms eating a sandwich that had been labeled:

_Property of Clint_

_Beware._

        He hadn’t been terribly hungry and there had been other things in the fridge he could have eaten but… this was just so much better. There was just something enticing about doing something you knew you weren’t supposed to. He didn’t even like egg salad.

     After brushing the crumbs off himself he left the break room and started looking around, he hadn’t really been paying attention when he came in but the two guards who were still following him didn’t seem to care if he was wandering/snooping around. And according to the data he was getting from the machines Steve was hooked up to he had a little time till he needed to do anything concerning the super soldier.


	4. Old Faces, Different Places

**Chapter 4: Old Faces, Different Places**

        Tony found the gym rather easily and settled down on one of the benches in the corner to watch the sparing agents for a little while. His entourage which he mentally dubbed ‘Thing 1’ and ‘Thing 2’, took up space leaning on the wall between him and the main door. He raised an eyebrow at them, which they rudely ignored, them being between him and the door wasn’t going to stop him from doing anything.

      First, it wasn’t the only door, closest door, but not the only. Second, he may have left his suit in the lab but with and even without his extreamis enhancements he wouldn’t need a suit to get passed two average agents. Which was what their Shield personal files said they were. His counterpart was younger though maybe he didn’t know any self-defense, so they didn’t expect he would? And maybe extreamis worked differently on his counterpart? Perhaps he didn’t get some of the physical enhancements?      

     Of course Tony didn’t get super solider level strength or speed either. He wasn’t going to be lifting a car above his head anytime soon but he could lift over four-hundred pounds and run pretty damn fast, for human standards. Or maybe his counterpart did get physical enhancements, and just neglected to let Shield know. That sounded like him.

     The genius was pulled from his thoughts as a dangerous redhead came into the room, and for a completely different reason than that would normally get his attention. She looked just like his Natasha at first glance but the longer he looked at her the more differences he started to see. She was definitely Natasha’s counterpart, but her curves were sharper, even the style of her hair was a little spikey. The redhead walked with the same confidence but it was more… forced, probably because she was about mid-twenties. So maybe only a couple of years away from the Red Room. He was sure he could tell this Natasha from his just by her walk.

       She seemed to notice him staring and made eye contact. Probably expecting him to look away like some creeper who’d been caught. He smirked and wiggled his fingers at her in a wave and she raised an eyebrow. He had no reason to be embarrassed for starting at her, even if she didn’t know why, and had absolutely no human compulsion to look away at direct eye contact. That he had learned early from Howard. No one wanted to do business with someone who couldn’t look them in the eyes. Looking away was like admitting weakness and inviting the sharks to feast.

      The redhead was probably suspicious and going to look into him now but he really didn’t care. Actually he kind of wanted her to. He’d say he missed his old team but that would be a mistake, and hazardous to his health if anyone back in his home universe realized he still cared. He purposely pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he watched Natasha strangle some poor sap with her thighs. He smirked at the sight with fondness before getting up and leaving the gym to check on Steve, Thing 1 and Thing 2 followed right behind him.

     It was odd seeing the counterparts of people he knew, had known, had _thought_ he knew. Whatever, it was odd seeing people that looked so similar but he knew were different people. Not really in a bad way though. It was _nice_ , to not see the mistrust in them. Even if the recognition was gone too. 

      Back in the other world Steve paced in front the TV. No one else was in the common room and he’d had the world news on as background noise while he tried to sketch in the rare moment of quite. His attention got caught though when the news guy started talking about Tony. After the usual talk about the extremely reduced sightings of Iron Man they went on to talk about how Tony Stark had been seen even less than the shiny metal armor sense the ‘Super Hero Civil War’ as they dubbed it.

      Tony was apparently only showing up at world council meetings and was using video chat for his own company’s board meetings or wasn’t there at all. The last contact Steve had with Tony was when his shield with a sticky note had come flying out of a portal to knock him over. That was two days ago. It had said Tony was taking a vacation but if what the news people were saying was true. No one had any contact with Tony since then, not even a call to SI. Pepper Potts put out a statement that Mr. Stark is on vacation and is not to be disturbed.

     Steve understood all that, but for some reason he felt off. He thought a few days ago that Tony taking a vacation was a good thing, because Tony never did. That was just the point though, Tony _never_ did that. He never slowed down, no matter how much he should. And that was making Steve worry that Tony was lying. What if he needed time away from public eyes because he was sick, or dying? He had been dying before and Natasha had said Tony hadn’t even told anyone. Or what if he was doing something dangerous? With no back up?

      A thousand things ran through Steve’s mind of what Tony could be doing, most of which was hazardous to engineer’s health. Then a more likely and horrifying thought hit him, the portals. What if Tony was experimenting with them? Well of course he was, he had already used them twice if front of Steve, but what if something went wrong?

      Steve paced faster before stopping and dropping onto the edge of the couch with his head in his hands and groaned. He was just working himself up with a bunch of ‘what-ifs’. Did he even have the right to worry anymore? After what he’d done to Tony? And apparently while Tony had been fighting for him and the rest of the team’s rights? After Fury left Steve had thought long and hard about everything that had been going on during the war.

      Everything Tony had done, and everything Steve himself had done. Guilt had started to settle in him once he’d realized Tony had been on his side the whole time until the moment Tony knew he’d been lied to about something important and personal. Steve still couldn’t say he wouldn’t have run with Bucky, and fought even his old friends to keep Bucky out of prison, he was a victim and didn’t deserve that. Even now after Bucky had elected to be re-frozen, he couldn’t let himself regret what he’d done because at least it had been Bucky’s choice. But part of him wanted to, the part of him that closed his eyes at night and saw Tony’s fearful eyes as he pinned him and raised his shield.

      Sometimes he imagine Tony’s pupils grew so big in that moment that his eyes turned black.

      In another universe when Tony returned back to the lab where Steve was still comatose but warming up nicely, Howard was thankfully absent. The genius stood beside Steve checking all the monitors with his own eyes and slightly increased the temperature of the IV connected to the soldier. Tony knew logically his own body could now keep functioning for almost a week and not be any worse for wear but his mind was a little weary from all that had been going on and he wanted to get some shut eye.

     There wasn’t any furniture in the lab but the wheelie chairs, the tables holding equipment, and the bed Steve was laying on. Tony had a brief thought to just get into his armor and sleep in it but shoved the thought away. His armor was comfortable enough to sleep in but he didn’t really _want_ to sleep standing up or even sitting in it. And let’s face it he would look ridicules laying down on the floor in the armor. He wanted a bed. Trying not to give it much thought Tony nudged Steve over and settled in beside him.

     It wasn’t his Steve, and he had no intention of taking advantage of the situation but he was tired and this Steve was warm and comforting in a way Tony was sure felt like home. It was an illusion but Tony let himself cling to it as he fell asleep because he knew the only safe place to think that way about Steve was in his own mind and dreams where no one but him could see.

      Tony woke up four point two hours later to someone shifting beside him. Realizing where he was he immediately kicked his right foot up and swung himself to his feet off the bed so that he was now standing beside it. Taking in the situation the genius was glad to see Steve wasn’t quiet awake yet. The soldier seemed to have just subconsciously turned into where Tony had been lying. Probably for the body heat, Tony’s mind instantly filled in before he could think of something ridicules. Like Steve likes to cuddle. Damn traitorous thoughts.        

     The genius quickly shook his head of the thought and looked around. No one was in the lab thankfully, though he was sure Fury had an eye on him. Mentally shrugging, since as long as Steve didn’t know (any Steve) then he didn’t care. Walking over to some of the equipment he checked all of Steve’s monitors. His core temperature was significantly up and his heart had come to a normal rate of beats per minute. It was impressive that Steve was already to this point, actually it was impressive he was alive at all. He was completely stabilized.

     Not that Tony would be satisfied until the soldier’s core temperature came up a few more degrees and his pretty blue eyes opened but it was great progress in the little time Tony had spent resting. Just as he finished looking over Steve’s status though the heart rate monitor showed increased beats per minute. Not enough to indicate anything normally but Tony knew what it meant. He watched Steve closely for a moment.

     “Steve? Captain Rogers? You with me?” Tony realized after he said the first name he probably shouldn’t be talking too familiar to someone that technically never met him, and was old fashioned so he went with Captain. He saw the captain’s eyes twitch and knew he was close to waking up. He thought of a few days ago to when his Steve woke up briefly in the lab. He had known just what to say to put Rogers at ease. But even if this man was similar to his Steve he couldn’t really tell him his team was safe.

      “If you can hear me, you’re safe Captain. You had, a bad fall but you’re alright.” It was the best Tony could do without lying his ass off but he knew soon Steve would demand better answers. Steve’s eyebrows scrunched up before he finally opened his eyes and looked at Tony. Immediately he tried to speak, but his voice broke the moment he tried. The genius was up and grabbing a cup of water before Steve even thought to want it.

      Within seconds the cup was at Steve’s lips and the soldier tried to hold it but his hand felt so heavy he could barely lift it at all. Tony just ignored Steve’s attempt to hold the cup. After so long on ice even a super soldier would need a little time.

     “Try to drink slowly.” Tony said gently as he held the back of Steve’s neck and carefully tipped the cup up. Steve drank greedily, he didn’t even realize how thirty he was. Once the cup was empty Tony pulled it back.

      “Better?” Tony asked, he was watching the captain, taking in every detail. The Steve in his world had woke up quickly, knew something was wrong, and ran via making a big hole in the wall. Though that could be explained by Shield keeping him sedated for almost a week while they prepared their fake forties room.

     Steve nodded tiredly. Then stubbornly tried to speak again. “W-what happen?” he finally got out in a whisper. Tony was sure he shouldn’t be the one to answer that. He got up to refill the cup with water and buy time. The few seconds it bought him weren’t nearly enough.

     “A lot.” Tony finally said softly as he helped Steve drink a bit more. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Steve his world was gone, even if he was pissed at his own Steve. This was the moment that would stay with this Steve Rogers forever, and suddenly Tony really thought he should be anywhere else, so he couldn’t screw it up, but he wasn’t just going to hand the explanation off to Shield either. His world’s Shield had done a bang up job after all. Setting the cup to the side, he pushed the bed’s button to raise Steve up into a sitting position and started talking.

         Tony tried to explain Steve’s situation concisely so that the newly awakened veteran could ask questions later and have more time to process. Even then he didn’t stop talking for a good five minutes straight. After the first two minutes Steve looked down at his lap, Tony could see he was thinking over every word and probably listening to outside the room as far as he could to see if he was being tricked.

     There was silence after Tony finally stopped and he waited for Steve to take everything in as he wondered what his own Steve had thought when he realized his old life was gone.

     “So… I’m in the future then?” Steve eventually asked. It was said so uncertain though Tony wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement.  

     “If you want to look at it that way. It’s the present now but considering- you know I really don’t think I should have been the one to explain things to you. I’ve probably already screwed it up.” Tony frowned while swiveling back and forth in his chair. Steve eyed him at that.

     “Then why are you? I’d think they would have someone to debrief me ready for when I woke up.” Steve was now looking Tony up and down like he was trying to figure him out. The genius just shrugged.

    “No idea, actually I expected someone to notice you’re awake by now from the cameras and come to shoo me out while they tell you about the world. It’s not even my world so they probably really should have.” Tony said casually and earned a completely confused stare from the soldier. Luckily he was saved from trying to explain he was from another dimension to someone fresh from the forties by the door opening.

       “Quiet right Stark.” Fury agreed walking up to the foot of the Captain’s bed, Howard Stark right behind him quickly moved to the machines to check Steve’s vitals. “Captain Rogers, I hope our guest has been accommodating.” Fury said eyeing Tony who noted Fury was using his last name to address him now but grinned cheekily anyway.

     “I’m hurt Nick. Truly devastated, how could you think I would be anything but hospitable to the newly awakened Captain?” Tony complimented his dramatics with a hand to his heart before rolling his eyes at the man and leaning back in his chair. Steve looked warily between the two.

      “Um, I suppose that would depend if I am really seventy years out of my time.” Steve watched them all carefully. Tony knew he was being cautious and didn’t really blame him. If he woke up to find his entire world had changed he’d want to be sure too. Though he felt something inside his chest clinch in sympathy as Fury had to destroy that small hope Steve had that it was all just a bad joke.

        “I am afraid so Captain.” Fury side eyed Tony like he was annoyed that the Captain had been told. Not that the genius cared, he knew Steve would find out soon enough and really with all the updated equipment in the room there wasn’t much hiding it. After a moment Steve’s head came up a bit quickly looking between Tony and Fury.

      “Did you say Stark?” He asked Fury but he was looking at Tony, and on the other side of Steve’s bed he’d caught Howard’s attention too.

      “Yes, you knew a Howard Stark Sr. that,” Tony pointed to Howard. “is Howard Stark Jr.” Tony spoke up before Fury could answer. Steve turned and looked Howard over.

       “Nice to meet you, Captain.” Howard smiled and stuck out his hand which triggered Steve’s manners and the soldier automatically shook the other man’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” He replied in kind, but soon turned back to the others, not to be distracted.

       “And you?” He stared right at Tony, like he knew his question was being avoided. The genius smirked.

        “I’m a completely different fantastically story that can be saved for later, but you can call me Tony.” While he didn’t mind if Steve knew he came from a different Earth telling him right after the shock of waking up in a different time where all his friends were either very old or very dead… well it didn’t seem very kind to tell him right now. Steve just gave him a long suffering look that Tony was well used to getting from an identical face. Still Tony mentally sighed, he was never good at denying Steve anything when they became teammates and definitely not once he thought they could be called friends.  

        “Alright yes,” Tony made a show of rolling his eyes. “I’m a Stark. But it is a…” He frowned looking down as if he could find the words he was looking for there. “Odd situation.” He finally settled on. “I’ll tell you later, once you’re up to speed, if you really want to know.” Tony smiled slightly at this different but very similar Steve frowning at him like he couldn’t decide to push or not.

     “Anyway I think I’ll take a walk around the base while these two fill you in.” Tony stood, stretching and waved his hand behind him lazily as he tried to casually make his way to the door. He could feel Steve’s eyes follow him out but didn’t dare look back. He really hoped he didn’t just give away how… _fond_ he was of Steve to Fury or his not-father.       

      Thing 1 and Thing 2 followed him from their posts at the door but he paid them no mind. He was just going to wander like he had before but realized his feet had taken him back towards the gym. Just as he reached the outside of the gym double doors he heard a familiar voice say something that had him fighting a smile.

     “Alright, who ate my sandwich?!” Through the small vertical windows on the doors Tony could see Clint’s counterpart in the middle of the gym staring every other agent down. Except Natasha, who was standing to the side leaning on the back wall. Tony figured he could just keep walking now and Clint would never know it was him, so he did. As he was he heard three thuds behind him that he was sure was the sound of three unlucky agents hitting the mat.

       The genius pulled out his sunglasses to cover his eyes and tapped into the video footage in the gym as he walked. He was right, of course, Clint was taking his anger out on some innocent new recruits, in the form of _‘training’_. Tony smirked to himself and shook his head as another unfortunate agent landed ass down on the gym mat before pulling his mind away from the video feed.

      This wasn’t quiet turning into the vacation he thought it would but it wasn’t that bad either. Maybe he could still catch some rays on a beach though, he did still have a few days. This world wasn’t so bad. He sent a mental command to his armor to come to him without taking out any walls as he started heading toward the hanger. Remembering he’d left the armor in the lab with Steve, Fury, and Howard though he sent a quick email to Fury. He didn’t need the pirate busting a blood vessel when he saw the armor leaving.       

       An hour later Tony was lounging on a beach chair on a small island with a luau themed bar built in the water on the sand bar that a nice, pretty waitress was wading back and forth to get him drinks from. He appreciated the view and it was all being charged on one of Howard Stark’s credit card which Tony did not feel even a little bad about. Actually Tony was pretty sure that the drinks tasted better knowing he was using Howard’s money to buy them, it wasn’t quite sticking it to his own father… but it was easy to pretend he was.

      Thirty minutes after that Tony sighed as his sun was blocked out by the shadow of the helicarrier. It would seem an hour and a half was all this world’s Nick Fury was willing to give him to relax. Either that or it took them this long to find him. If it was the latter though he was very disappointed in their spy skills. After all the remote island he found wasn’t even far from the US.

     The next few days were boring. Fury tried to interest him in other projects but he didn’t really see any he wanted to get into. As for the Captain, he was standing by the end of the first day, and walking by the second but since the only thing Tony could really do is monitor his progress, by the third day he decided it would be better to go back home. Check how things were going and maybe try another universe. Do to seeing him every day he was getting too attached to the Steve Rogers of this world anyway.

        “Tony?” Steve called, spotting him from down the hall. He was headed up to the top deck to make a portal to leave, and felt a little like he had just been caught sneaking out of the house.

        “Yea Cap?” The genus stopped and turned back with a smile. That was another thing, he had started calling this world’s Steve ‘Cap’ instead of ‘Captain’ which, yes he knew he was splitting hairs with that logic but it seemed like an important difference. And he had crossed the line into too comfortable, almost friendly. He knew what it was like to be Steve Rogers ‘friend’ and while it was nice, he didn’t particularly like the fall out.

      He let the Captain catch up but then continued walking towards the open hanger. It would be best if he left before he wore out his welcome.

       “Where you headed?” asked the Captain once he fell into pace beside him. Tony shrugged trying to seem nonchalant as he replied.

      “I’m headed home. Should check up on things.” If Tony wasn’t familiar with another Steve Rogers he probably wouldn’t have noticed the slight hitch in the Captain’s steps. He stepped closer, till they were almost shoulder to shoulder so that he could act as a support if needed and slowed his pace thinking Steve’s almost unnoticeable stumble was because he was still recovering.

      “I thought you lived here?” Steve looked a bit baffled at Tony’s startled laugh. Him living at SHEILD? Now that was funny.

      “Ah, no. Thankfully I was only staying for a few days.” Tony quieted his chuckles but still smiled. He hadn’t been relaxed around Steve enough to have a real laugh for a long time. He was studiously ignoring the fact it wasn’t the same Steve. “No, I told you when you woke up my situation was a bit complicated. The truth is I am very far from home, or very close depending on how you look at time/space dimensions.” Now Steve looked completely confused.  Like Tony had just told him birds became the dominate species while he was asleep.    

      “Come on. I’ll show you.” Tony couldn’t stop his smirk at Steve’s baffled look if he tried, and automatically nudged Steve’s shoulder with his own in a friendly gesture. He realized it the moment after he did it, but didn’t feel like it was a mistake with this Steve that just smiled and followed him. It was easier with this Steve because of the lack of baggage between them. It was just confusing at times since they have the same face.

       “Hey, I wanted to thank you. Fury said it was because of you they were able to wake me up. If you hadn’t I’d still-” Steve paused briefly looking uncomfortable but pressed on. “-be in the ice.” They stopped walking and the solider shifted on his feet. Tony wanted nothing more than to hold this Steve and never let anything bad happen to him again. He restrained himself by just stepping close and putting a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

     “You don’t need to thank me for that. I couldn’t have left you in there, I’m just glad I knew how to get you out.” Tony smiled softly and he could tell he was showing too many _feelings_ as he kept eye contact. So he started to pull back and continue to where he had left his armor but before he could make it more than a few inches Steve had pulled him into a solid hug. The genius stilled immediately not wanting to do anything to make Steve think he wanted him to stop, and wrapped his arms around the soldier tightly as if he could keep him there.

      Steve didn’t seem to want to move either though. His big arms were wrapped solidly around Tony’s waist like steel bands, while his back bowed slightly so that his head buried into Tony’s neck. It took a moment for Tony to relax into the hold, letting out a breath he melted into the embrace and leaned his head so that his cheek rested lightly on blond hair.

      “Thank you.” Steve whispered into his neck, and Tony smirked softly above him. He had just told him he didn’t have to thank him, but Steve was stubborn and he always would be. At this moment Tony found it endearing. He was running his fingers soothingly through Steve’s hair before he knew what he was doing. He stopped for half a second when he noticed but decided it didn’t really matter. There was very little chance Steve didn’t know his feelings toward him at this point.

     “Always.” Tony whispered back, not bothering to point out again that he didn’t need thanks. That he would have always done it. That he would do just about anything for Steve and it didn’t seem to matter which Steve. That this hug, that he would _never_ ask for, was the best thanks he could have ever received. It was a long time before either of them pulled away. Tony knew he should have long before but Steve seemed comfortable and he just wasn’t going to be the one that popped this happy bubble. So it had to be Steve or they would have stayed that way in the SHIELD hanger until Tony dropped unconscious… or Fury found them.

     It was hard leaving, which was why Tony knew it was way past time to go. Much longer in this world, with this Steve, and he might make it his permanent vacation spot (or new home). So he took in as much of this happy, kind, untainted by the new world Steve as he could and he flew through the portal he summoned with his armor. The look of awe on Steve’s face a gift he couldn’t help but treasure. As soon as he was back in his quiet lab though, carefully landing the armor before stepping out he felt the loneliness he had forgotten sinking back in.

     If he was going to keep doing this he needed a new self-imposed rule. Don’t get attached to the Steve Rogers' of the multiverse. Tony knew as soon as he thought it that wasn’t going to work. So revised; Don’t seek out Steve Rogers in the multiverse. Yes, he could do that. Probably.                   


	5. On the Home Front

**Chapter 5: On the Home Front**

      The first thing Tony did once he was back in his own dimension was check everyone, and everything. Spider-ling was still alive and doing fine, though he did find some trouble with a bank robbery yesterday. Clint’s family was still secure in a lovely safe house. The family of the guy they were calling ‘Ant-man’ of all things, was still completely off grid, by their own means. So Tony knew the government didn’t have them. If the texts Rhodey sent him were to be believed the new leg braces were doing much better than the last, and Pepper said the board was in a good mood due to his latest Stark phone designs and the good press from donating some prototype prosthetics to the VA. Which brought SI’s stock up. 

      Utilizing some tech he wasn’t supposed to have access to Tony then processed to check up on every Avenger including the runaways. Natasha had dropped in and had stayed at Clint’s family safe house for the last few days. While Clint himself was last spotted by a camera in Germany in a shadier part of town, probably looking for intel for something. Thor was still off world or at least hadn’t been spotted on any camera on Earth. Bruce still hadn’t been seen or heard from since Ultron, but there was still an active search looking for any trace of him.

     Wanda… he didn’t really consider an Avenger but she and Vision were on one of their secret getaways which this time seemed to be in France. And while he couldn’t really push himself through Wakanda’s barrier or other security measures without making a lot of noise, from what he could tell through an innocently placed advanced thermal satellite (plus version) Steve and Sam was still there, taking a jog as of an hour ago.

     It seemed everyone was alright, so now it was time to check on Operation Neuter Ross. Tony smirked, Jarvis come up with it. He was so proud.      

     In Wakanda Steve was toweling off from a shower after his run. He had mostly managed to ignore that nervous feeling that Tony was into something he shouldn’t be. After all he couldn’t really tell Tony not to do something anymore could he? It’s not like he could say ‘it effects the team’ or ‘I’m the leader you should have told me’. Like he had when Ultron came about. Though really that one affected the whole planet, Tony just hadn’t meant it to, yet. He could still remember Tony saying ‘isn’t that the point? To end the fight, so we can go home?’

     The blond frowned pulling on a shirt, he had come back with some remark about fighting a war that wasn’t there yet got people killed. And in that instance, with Ultron he was right. But… part of him, the solider in him, sometimes wondered if Tony had been right too. If the aliens did come back, how many would die if they couldn’t stop them? If they weren’t prepared? He shook his head of the thoughts, that kind of thinking would lead him nowhere. He just hoped Tony knew what he was doing this time. And that he was okay.

     Thankfully he was given a distraction. The TV which was playing the world news on low in his room showed that a major earthquake just hit India. He sent a minor alert to the others and suited up. Minor alerts were for things he didn’t need the whole team for but if they were able he could use them. Disaster relief was something he could do himself but if the others came they could help more people. As he and Sam boarded the jet T’Challa was letting them use he got a positive ping back from Wanda and Clint.

     A moment later a negative from Natasha, she was apparently busy stateside. He hadn’t even had time to give Scott Lang a way to communicate before he disappeared. Apparently he disappeared very well as even Natasha hadn’t been able to find anything other than Ant-man’s creator and daughter was off grid too. So it would be just him, Sam, Clint, and Wanda. As much as he tried to not think about Tony even now his mind was betraying him as he couldn’t help but think Iron man would be very useful for this mission.

     Steve tried to focus on flying the almost completely self-flying jet as he knew that while Iron man being there would be a great help mostly he just wanted Tony there. He knew it was stupid, but he missed Tony. Even when Iron man ‘retired’, Tony had still been there. Upgrading their gear, making sure they had anything they needed, just checking in on them. Now that Steve thought about it, Tony still lived at the compound with the rest of them more days out of the week than not. Despite their goodbyes after Ultron it never felt like Tony really left, because he hadn’t.

     Now it felt like he was missing part of himself, and the guilt over what happened in Siberia wasn’t helping. Especially after all the things Fury had told him about what Tony was doing for everyone in the middle of everything, and still doing now, after most the team had left him. Hurt him.

     Back at the tower Tony found that his PR department was doing a great job building up the Avenger’s image. On a related note there was a new, very popular kid’s website with free Avenger games. Giving kids free stuff to endear their parents worked well for public images. It wasn’t going to fix anything by itself but rebuilding the Avenger’s image was just one part of Tony’s plan.

      SI’s legal team had been busy too as they found a new argument to a part of the Accords. Ross was probably upset, if calling twelve times in the last day was any indication. And while the legal team hadn’t made much progress on the defense cases, it had only been a few days since he’d left. So everything was going according to ‘Operation Neuter Ross’. Before, Tony had planned to have Steve’s help and use his good, wholesome American image to steam roll the Accords after they all looked like they had tried to play nice and bend to the UN counsel; that had not worked out.

     New plan, he needed to make _the people_ take it down. He could argue until he was blue in the face and those old wind bags would still be trying to collar him and any ‘enhanced human’. Though worse for the ones who couldn’t fight back, who wouldn’t be missed. There were probably already government sanctioned human experiments being done.  No, what he needed was protests in the streets. Picketing the White House’s front lawn. The scared people that the Accords were built on, he needed _those_ people to rise up and say it was wrong. Step one, make the people believe in the Avengers again.

     Steve was actually helping with that, not that he knew but since he was still going out and doing missions, helping people, it was slowly but surely rebuilding trust with the masses. As long as Cap and his team doesn’t make any major screw ups. Tony knew that couldn’t last forever; that eventually there would be collateral damage, casualties, and people would be looking for someone to blame again. He just hoped to have the Accords thrown out by then.

     Tony sensed an alert through extreamis and found Steve had left Wakanda. After a little searching he was able to figure out a probable flight plan to an Earth quake disaster in India. He smacked his hand on the stainless steel work table in front of him. While those relief missions were helping his plans Tony was frustrated every time one happened. He wanted to go. He wanted to be there, and help. Cover his teammates. And it pissed him off that he was told not to, that he couldn’t do something as basic as disaster relief because Iron Man needed _permission_ to cross borders.     

     The genius looked up and spotted his escape, the dimension portal. This was exactly why he had made it, he couldn’t help people here without screwing up his plans to throw out the Accords but somewhere in the multiverse someone needed help and there was no border patrol, Tony thought smirking. No one but Jarvis and probably Vision had noticed he was back yet so he could just jump over to another Earth for a little while. He did still have time as he had cleared out a week and it had only been a few days.

      Tony took a quick shower, grabbed a sandwich, put his flight suit on this time (his clothes always bunched annoyingly in the suit), reset the portal to a new Earth and was gone.    

      Later that night Steve was covered in mud and exhausted but thankfully on his way back to Wakanda. He had a lot on his mind though. Since he left the US, (defected) Steve thought it was the shield that he was missing. He had felt off balance since leaving the shield behind with Tony. After today though he knew it wasn’t the shield, he had the shield now. It was Tony.

      Not having Tony at his back, covering him, helping strategize, and even not hearing his stupid quips had Steve very off his game. With Tony in the field, whether he was supposed to be covering Steve or not he always was. Steve got knock off a building, Iron man caught him. Someone tried to shoot him in the back, Iron man took them out before the shot ever went off. He needed help knowing the best way to get someone out of a caved in building, Iron man knew how not to crush the people inside.

      That last one was what Steve had needed help with today. If Wanda hadn’t been there to hold up half a building with her magic Steve knew his well-meaning efforts would have crushed a family of four in their own house. He knew he had helped a lot of people today but it was the ones he so easily could have hurt that was sticking with him. And the fact was he knew if Tony had been there he would have known, would have said, and would have helped Steve get the people out.

     Tony was brilliant, he complemented Steve in a way no one else ever could. Challenged him, told him when he was wrong, when something could be done better, smarter. And while Steve didn’t always agree with the genius, without Tony he was off, and it had nearly cost lives today. He clenched his jaw and ran a hand roughly through his hair. He needed to talk to Tony.

     Of course he knew he could get used to doing missions without Tony. He _had_ done missions without him, but he didn’t want to. It had been months since their fall out in Siberia and Tony had made the first big step in coming to get him after that building collapsed on him. Even made another gesture by giving back the shield, and with everything Fury said and Natasha confirmed he was doing with the Accords... Yes, it was far past time to reach out to Tony.

       Three days later on the other side of the world Tony came back through his portal, his suit still had some pink slime clinging to it despite the genius’s efforts to rinse it off in the last universe’s ocean.

    “Uh! Shit!” he cursed stepping out of the armor and immediately covering his nose. Apparently the slime wasn’t just hard to wash off, it stunk worse than a sewer. And he would know because he had briefly opened his mask when the thing had made him chase it inside one. He swiftly stripped out of his flight suit and stepped into the lab decontamination shower as Jarvis turned it on the emergency settings without being asked. It was for lab safety, the compounds now coming out of the shower head should break down whatever wasn’t supposed to be on him. Not that he thought it was poisonous or anything. Probably. It was just disgusting.

       After ten minutes it switched to a regular shower, after thirty minutes Tony got out and mentally ordered the armor inside to get cleaned. It really smelled something awful.

     “Alright J, what I’d miss?” Tony finally asked as he slipped on a pair of clean pants that he left down in the lab in case of… well things like this. He felt a bit cleaner, but he was sure he was going to have to take at least three more showers before he felt completely clean.

     “Operation Neuter Ross is progressing. All Avengers are accounted for, as much as they ever are. Captain Rogers called on that archaic device. SI stock is doing well, and Miss Potts has sent over paperwork for you to sign.” Jarvis ran down everything, but seemed reluctant and tried to bury Steve’s call in the middle.

    “Well that’s- wait what do you mean Ste- Rogers called? Why didn’t you say that first?” Tony frowned. “Was something wrong?”

     “My apologies Sir, I should have told you while you were trying to get potentially toxic chemicals off. I will endeavor to learn from my error.” Jarvis said in his perfect British accent, making Tony equal parts proud and annoyed at the clear sarcasm.

    “What happened?” He ordered. He loved Jarvis, but if Steve called it must have been important, and he needed an answer before his mind came up with some truly terrible ones.

    “Nothing time sensitive as far as I can tell. He called the night you went back through after he returned from the disaster in India. I have been monitoring him and as of twenty-seven minutes ago the satellite showed him safe and secure in Wakanda.” Jarvis relayed the information quickly as he sensed his creator’s worry mounting. Tony let out a breath and realized he had been holding it.

    “Okay, but then what’d he want?” Tony muttered, it more of a rhetorical question. That Jarvis answered anyway as Tony went to his lab drawer and pulled out the outdated phone that had bothered him just to look at for months.

      “That, sir, I believe you will have to ask Captain Rogers.” Tony rolled his eyes at the obvious statement, but didn’t reply. The old flip phone had his complete attention, eventually he opened it.

      ‘2 Missed Calls, 1 Message’ it read. All from Steve Rogers. He couldn’t help a smirk and a slow shake of his head as he read the message. Either Steve didn’t know those were the four scariest words in any relationship or he did and was screwing with him. ‘ _We need to talk._ ’       

     Tony fiddled with the phone a few moments, staring at the message and missed calls and wondering if he should call back or wait for Steve to try again. Seeing as Rogers hadn’t tried to contact him again since yesterday morning he decided to take the initiative. He was never that patient, and knew his curiosity would be killing him before long if he did nothing.

    ‘ _What’s up?_ ’ he texted slowly due to having to type it out on the ancient phone. About twenty seconds later the phone was ringing, and Tony frowned with a mental sigh. He was really hoping to keep it to texting despite hating the dino-phone’s lack of keyboard. He pushed the green button and accepted the call.

    “Hello?” Tony answered. There was silence on the other end, like now that Steve had him on the line he didn’t know what to say.

    “Tony.. I’ve been trying to call you.” Steve finally spoke. It didn’t sound much like an accusation though more like he had actually been worried. Tony felt a stab of guilt at not being there to answer the phone. Steve had given it to him as a sort of emergency contact and while it was never mentioned Tony assumed it went both ways and Steve would call him if something was wrong on his end. What if Steve had needed him?

     “Sorry, I wasn’t exactly in range. I’ll fix it. Is everyone alright?” He was already running ideas through extreamis to find a way of forwarding the call through dimensions, so he would never miss Steve’s call again. Then his mind split from that and reached out to check all the team’s locations as worry was now starting to equal his guilt as he hung onto each second before Steve replied.

    “What? Oh! Yea, everyone’s fine. I.. just thought it was time we talked.” Steve’s last words were hesitant and Tony almost didn’t notice as his fear drained and was replaced with annoyance that Steve had used his ‘emergency’ phone for a social call.

    “Really?” Tony rolled the word out. “And what exactly would we have to talk about?”

    “ _Tony_ , please. I’m trying.” Steve’s voice had a plea in it which Tony kind of hated because it was making him listen. Making his resolve waver and he wanted to still be angry, about Barnes, about Siberia, the Accords, and hiding things from him. Important things, _personal_ things. But it had been months and now most his anger had fizzled out, and that was making it harder to cover the hurt. He let out a breath, he wanted this, wanted to stop fighting with Steve. He may not ever have Steve the way he wanted him but maybe one day they could be called friends again. If they ever really were. He pushed that last thought away and resolved to not let his voice show pain.            

      “Alright, fine. How is everyone?” That was the biggest verbal olive branch Steve was getting from him. Apparently it was enough as Steve talked about the team as much as he could and Tony found himself inputting here and there. Talking about Vision and Wanda’s secret rendezvous, that apparently weren’t that secret to Steve either. Clint’s family, Scott being off grid to both of them. By the time they hung up Tony was surprised to realize they had been talking for over an hour.

      Even more surprising though was the fact that instead of arguing and yelling like Tony thought it would turn out, they actually talked. Not about any of the real stuff they needed to, but it was a start. And Tony felt better about Steve and their broken little family than he had since this whole mess started.

      “Sir, Miss Romanoff is due here in twenty minutes.” Jarvis informed him after he had been sitting there thinking for a while.

       “Wha- Why?” He couldn’t really remember anything he was supposed to be doing today that would include Natasha.

     “There is a gala tonight for the Maria Stark foundation and Miss Potts scheduled Miss Romanoff as your plus one. She seemed to think it would help with the positive publicity to have you both there.” Jarvis explained knowing his creator only accidently made it back from another Earth in time to make the event.

      Tony huffed, he was sure he could hear a long suffering tone in his AI’s voice. Though it shouldn’t be possible. “Well, I suppose I should get ready then.” He was dressed to the nines moments before Natasha was driven up by Happy, and gracefully slipped into the backseat with her. She raised an eyebrow at him like she knew he was up to something. He just smirked back at her. She was always doing that, either she always thought he was up to something or was taking pot shots to seeing if he squirmed.

     “You look good.” She pointed out. The genius knew she meant he looked too good though, too young, too fit. Well he had always kept fit but he knew extreamis had helped define his body even better.

     “I do, and you look as stunning as always.” Tony deflected what she was hinting at but softened his smirk into something a little more real at the same time. He absolutely wasn’t going to tell her what he had been doing but she was his friend and one of the few that didn’t jump ship and leave him at the first opportunity. So it was nice to see her all dressed up like the beauty she was, she deserved a night out to let herself feel as attractive as she was. A break from slipping through international borders and the stress from the divide between the team.

     Natasha was the only one that was really on good terms to both him and Steve’s renegades and it had to be hard going back and forth between them. The rest of the drive was silent, a mostly comfortable silence, but he could feel Natasha watching him. Cataloging every move and every wrinkle gone. As they were pulling up Tony finally had to say something.

     “No, I am not a clone, android or alien. I am fine, and not dying.” Tony stated with an eye roll. She lifted an eyebrow as he place one of his prototype Nano mask on, it could make him look like anyone but he had programed the nanites to just make him look older. About five year younger than he actually was, he intended to set it back a few years every couple months so his younger appearance would be overlooked by the press.

       The genius got out of the car with a smirk at her and offered Natasha his hand. He just managed to see her lips quirk into a small smile before she had to replace it with her press face as she got out of the car, straight into the flashing of cameras that led to the front doors of the gala.

      “Better not be.” She murmured once they were inside so that only he could hear. Tony only smiled down softly at her as he led them to the bar, and got them both a drink. It was nice having a friend worry for you, he was hoping she wasn’t just looking for information to take back to the others, or Fury. He tried not to think like that but she was a spy so it was kind of hard to not have the thought in the back of his mind somewhere.

       The night progressed as expected. He shook hands, smiled and laughed with people he didn’t know, wished he didn’t, or just plain didn’t like for various reasons. Natasha did the same while keeping an extra eye on him. His mind couldn’t help but wander though as he was smiling blankly at an old woman who was saying nasty things about gay rights, his mind wandered to Steve. How they had finally talked, it had made him feel so much lighter but he couldn’t help but ask, why? Why now, would Steve suddenly reach out? Had Steve been stewing after he had pulled him out of that collapsed building and it had just finally pressed him to call? Did giving the shield back last week push him to make contact? Did he need something from him?                 

     Maybe it was better he didn’t know. He nodded in the right place of whatever story the old woman’s husband was telling and excused himself from the group with practiced ease. Out on the balcony it was easier to breathe. Tony loosened his tie and leaned on the railing, at least no one else was out there so he could have a bit of peace. It didn’t really matter if Steve wanted something from him. Tony would already give him anything, it just sucked Steve was pretending to make amends for whatever it was… That didn’t really sound like Steve… maybe if it was for Barnes?  

      A loud bang and bright flash from inside the ball room put him on high alert and he twisted quickly out of sight from the open balcony doors and sent out an alert signal from his watch.

     Two hours later Tony is relaxing at home with a sprained wrist. They had been after him, looking to abduct him for some reason. They had taken hostages from the gala attendees and had threated them so that he would go along quietly. Luckily he didn’t need to reveal extreamis, they had under estimated the Black Widow, possibly because she didn’t technically have any super powers. And they weren’t at all prepared for the Vision to show up. Probably didn’t think anyone would have time to get out a distress call.

      Still while getting away from the guys trying to drag him out of the gala into a waiting getaway van he had managed to sprain his wrist. Which hurt, but extreamis would have him functional by morning. Technically it had been slightly broken as his scans at home had told him but since he refused to let himself be taken to a hospital no one could prove it had been broken and no one could prove he was healing faster than a human. He really didn’t need that kind of press at the moment.

       What Tony did need was to figure out who was trying to grab him and why. They were unprepared this time but he wasn’t going to wait for next time to check into it. His damn wrist was slowing him down though. Every time he stretched his right hand’s fingers out to a further key pain spiked up his arm. It happened again and he practically growled as he sat back giving his wrist a rest and closed his eyes to fully use extreamis to push his way through security feeds from the gala.

       With extreamis he didn’t need to type but it helped him stay focused and he was used to the rhythmic movement of his hands. When he dived in with extreamis it was _extraordinary_. Like being part of a world he could barely connect to before but it was so easy to deviate for the same reason. Like someone seeing the internet for the first time and they just kept hitting links to more things, and forgetting why they logged on in the first place.    

      An hour later the genius had gone through tons of data and felt like he was making some head way. He had found the identities of his would be abductors after digging through DMV records using facial recognition, breaking into classified army records, and a few redacted files he found what he was looking for. It seemed all the men had at one time or another served under General Ross.

     Of course it wasn’t damning evidence but Tony didn’t need any more proof to believe it himself. For the next twelve minutes he ran through different scenarios for why Ross would abduct him. The ringing of Steve’s bat phone had him practically jumping out of his skin he was so deep in thought. He cursed as he jarred his wrist and scooped up the ancient phone.

      “Hello?” Tony answered.    

      “Tony, you alright? I just saw the news.” Steve asked in what Tony thought was a bit of an anxious tone. Like he cared. Maybe.

     “I’ll live. They were woefully unprepared. Should probably feel sorry for them, Nat’s interrogating them now.” Tony smirked at the end. Steve seemed to relax at that, Tony was pretty sure he heard the soldier take a breath like he’d been holding it or something.

      “So Natasha’s okay too. Were you injured?” Steve seemed to realize Tony hadn’t actually said if he had been injured. “Please just tell me, Tony.” Steve added when Tony didn’t immediately answer and was wondering if he should bother answering fully.

      “I may have broken my wrist in the middle of everything, but I’m fine.” Tony huffed figuring it wouldn’t hurt to tell Steve. It wasn’t like he could bench him anymore. “And Natasha didn’t get a scratch.” He added knowing Steve worried about her, he had seemed to worry about all of them when they were a team.

     “Oh.” Steve paused for a moment. “Did you get it looked at?” Tony rolled his eyes knowing Steve couldn’t see him. Okay, he wasn’t the best at going to medical, but really he had all he could ever need to treat himself right in his lab.

     “Yeah, Nat glared me to the paramedics. They gave me a splint, it’ll heal soon enough anyway.” He wondered as soon as he said it if he shouldn’t have said that last part.

      “…How soon?” Of course Rogers asked. So there it was, did he tell Steve and confirm he was different or say something about the normal healing period, was it two to four weeks? Though he’d already said it was broken not sprained…

     “By tomorrow morning, maybe afternoon.” Tony replied quietly. Steve didn’t reply immediately. They were both silent for a while. Tony knew Steve wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to say anything. What could he say really? _I injected myself with a nanite/serum compound and when I thought you were going to kill me it fully activated and changed me._ That would sound accusatory even though it was true, and it would bring up the thing they were _not_ talking about.

     “Tony, what-“ Steve started. The words were spoken softly but Tony had to run them over anyway. He didn’t want the fragile peace between them to be broken so soon.

     “So nothing to really worry about. I’m fine, Nat’s fine, none of the civilians got hurt and all the bad guys are in boxes, all good.” Tony cut off Steve’s words with his rant and Steve fell quite again.

    “Do we know what they wanted?” The soldier asked after a moment. Tony was grateful Steve let it go but was now faced with another dilemma. Should he tell Rogers what he found out? Though Natasha would tell him they had been after him so no sense in keeping that back.

    “They were after me. Probably wanted me to make something ‘fun’ for them.” Tony tried to play the whole thing down, if the plan he was thinking of was going to work he couldn’t have Rogers trying to stop him for his safety, not that Rogers had shown much concern for his well-being recently but they seemed to be falling back on old habits.

     Steve wasn’t content with just writing off the incident (just as Tony refused to earlier) so they ended up talking about possibilities for a while. At the end Tony had managed to say nothing about Ross, but he was sure Natasha would figure it out before long and could only hope she didn’t think telling Steve was a priority before Tony could set up his trap.

      Tony sighed as he snapped the flip phone shut. That conversation was draining but at least they still weren’t arguing with each other, _yet_. Actually Steve might have even been concerned about him. He had a hard time believing it after Siberia but it had been anyone else he would have said they were worried about him.

       Well there was one thing he could do to get his mind off it. It turns out there is a way to differentiate the universes. The last Earth he went to (with the slime thing) had a system for it. Called themselves 614. They basically called the ‘center’ Earth ‘Earth 1’ which is supposedly the Earth that all other Earths are based on. Like it was the first Earth and then when someone went left instead of right ‘Earth 2’ came into existence and so on, and so on.

     The further you were from Earth 1 the higher the number. Tony emerged himself for hours putting together where his Earth was in comparison to Earth 1 and then to the other Earths he had been to and writing a small description to help him remember those ones were friendly. And not at all so he wouldn’t forget which Earth held the Steve he had released from the ice, which was Earth 904913.

     By the time he set up the new program to detect and display which Earth the portal opened to he was mentally exhausted and his wrist was aching from using it despite the injury to it. He stumbled over to the extremely comfortable couch he kept in the corner and fell face forward into it. Snuggling down he was about to fall asleep when he felt DUM-E drape a blanket over him. With that he was reassured he was home and safe, and he drifted off.


	6. Earth 314

**Chapter 6: Earth 314**

      Seven hours later Tony rolled over and moaned as he stretched out. He hadn’t slept for that long in one segment for a while. Despite that and his technical age being almost fifty he felt great. He smiled as he stretched his right hand’s fingers, rotating his wrist, closing and opening his hand. Yesterday it had been broken, now it didn’t hurt at all, not even a twinge.

     In the beginning when extreamis had fully active in Siberia it had been almost torture. Tons of data fighting for his attention. Everything from the quinjet flight logs to the news in Asia pinging at him. It piled up fast. If Friday hadn’t noticed he needed help and started shielding him with a hastily put together firewall he was sure he would have lost his mind in the data. Not to mention the physical pain of Extreamis repairing his body.

     Now though, even without help from his AIs he could filter out the data and maintain awareness of himself. Perks of being a genius with a high learning curve. In moments like this though he was reminded why he believed it was worth the risks to keep it. Not that it would be easy to get rid of it or even possible to take out as there was hundreds of nanites flowing through his body now, not to mention the biological component of extreamis. He was really rather attached.

     “Sir, you have a meeting with R&D in forty minutes.” Jarvis informed him. He could of course have extreamis tell him that, but he didn’t want to. He limited it to only alert him to emergencies and specific contingency, mostly security. After all if he wanted to know something it would only take a thought to reach out anyway.

     “Alright. I’m up.” Tony sighed and negated his response by flopping back into a laying position on the couch. He could practically feel Jarvis rolling his incorporeal eyes at him.

     Four hours later he left R&D after spending way too long telling people why their projects weren’t working and what needed to be changed. There was one interesting project with the base of a virtual reality game. Kind of reminded him of his holo-displays but the girl who was head of the project was trying to make it more affordable for mass production without losing quality. He might send her some tips later.    

      A quick trip down to the lawyers informed him that they already had strong defense cases set up for each of ‘Steve’s Avengers’ that were pretty iron clad based on similar cases with precedent. They were compiling paperwork they would need and waiting on court dates to proceed. Tony had planned to have Ross out of the way by the time they were this far along, but it would seem he had underestimated his own lawyer’s efficiency. Which meant he would need to speed up his time table.

     Tony felt fear settle in his stomach as he took the elevator back up to the tower penthouse. He knew what he had to do to get rid of Ross quickly. He knew since yesterday it would work as Ross was willing to make a poor attempt to abduct him. Unfortunately what he needed to do to catch Ross doing something underhanded was to let Ross catch him. The billionaire took a deep breath and tried to settle his nerves, it was necessary. He was not in any way looking forward to it but with extreamis it would be safe-ish and he could record everything. 

     Ross would show up himself to brag at Tony personally, he might even get a confession. He just had to endure Ross’s goons until then. Which meant he couldn’t put up more than a token protest until he got Ross doing or saying something incriminating where he could record it first. Yeah, he wasn’t happy with the plan, but if he was going to clear the team anytime within the next year he needed to take Ross down. And the guy was remarkably good at covering his tracks for someone whose tech skills amounted to military grade, as in bare necessity.   

     Taking another deep breath Tony sat down in his lab and started planning his own kidnapping. He would need to make it look like a good opportunity but not too easy to be seen as a trap. After looking through his calendar there was only one event that was already scheduled, public, low-ish security, and was before the first court date his lawyer set to defend the renegade Avengers. Two weeks from now he was going to be kidnapped… he was _really_ not looking forward to it.         

       By midnight Tony had worked out all the details and had moved onto trying to increase the power output his gauntlet could handle when Steve called on the dino-tech Tony had forwarded to his home system. He still looked around when the ringer went off but didn’t bother hunting for it.

     “Pick it up, J.” The engineer stated while he continued to poke at the gauntlet.

      “Hello?” Tony answered when Jarvis made the common tone of a picked up phone that Tony knew was done for his benefit.

       “Hey Tony.” Steve paused for a moment like he didn’t know what else to say. “Um, how’s everything over there?” he asked. Tony raised an eyebrow though there was nobody to direct it at as Steve couldn’t see him so he didn’t bother looking away from his work.

      “Mm, fine. Just working.” He was sure leaving out that he finished planning his own kidnapping and subsequent escape was the right move. Steve wasn’t his Captain anymore so he didn’t have the right to order Tony not to go ahead with his plan, but the genius was positive Steve would find a way to fuck up his plan anyway. Probably involving Natasha.

      “…On the portal?” Steve asked and things went downhill from there quickly. In two minutes they were arguing about the safety of the portals, by five minutes they started spewing venom over the disaster of the Accords at each other. At ten minutes they were yelling back and forth over each other and by twelve minutes Tony finally hung up fighting the urge to throw something. Finally spotting the dino-phone he swiped it up and threw it at the reinforced glass wall of the lab. It shattered on impact.

      As Tony breathed heavily trying to rein in his fury DUM-E beeped excitedly and zoomed over with a dust pan, bumping into things on his way. The genius watched as his first born cleaned up one mess only to create another. It calmed him slightly, but he was still angry. Ste- Rogers thought the portals were dangerous, told him he shouldn’t use them. Like he had any right. Like Rogers even knew what he was talking about.

     Of course the portals _could_ be dangerous. In the wrong hands, Tony knew that better than anyone. He _made_ them, so there was no one who knew better what the portals were capable of, not on this planet anyway. But Tony knew how to use them, and was learning more about them every day. So as long as someone didn’t break in and do something stupid to the portal, or steal it there wasn’t any real threat. Right now there wasn’t even that many people that knew it existed, so the odds on that were low too.

      It wasn’t even about that though, Ste- _Rogers,_ _damn it_ , seemed to think something was already wrong, like Tony would screw it up himself… like he didn’t trust him. And that there was their whole problem. Tony clenched his fists on the table his anger sparking again but he refrained from throwing anything else. Ultron was a mistake, he knew that. But would Steve never trust him again? Even with his own tech?

     With a breath that was almost a growl Tony got to his feet and set the portal to a new dimension. It was a few days before anyone would need him for anything, and he really wanted to be anywhere but here (alone with his thoughts), at the moment. And using the portal to do it when Rogers had just raged about it made that spiteful part of him happy.

      “Alright J, I’ll be gone a few days at most. Keep the fort for me.” Tony tried to keep his voice level despite his anger still simmering just below the surface.

      “Very good sir, I shall have the kettle on.” Jarvis quipped back, and Tony’s lips twitched up for a moment distracting him from his ire.

      “That’s my boy.” Tony shot back as his armor assembled around him and he walked through the glowing blue portal. Proud that he didn’t even flinch anymore.                   

       On the other side of the world Steve was fuming. Didn’t Tony understand how dangerous things like portals are? Tony _should_ know better than _anyone_. He was the one worried the Chitauri would come back some day. What if they could tell when Tony opened one, it would lead them right to him! Or some horrible thing could come through the portal when Tony opened it and kill him! Steve hit the Wakandian reinforced punching bag harder as he thought through scenarios.

      Then of course Steve couldn’t really understand the dangers of whatever science Tony was doing to ripe a hole through the universe or however Tony made the portals work but he was sure it wasn’t particularly safe. Definitely not test, not on anyone but Tony himself. And the time when he brought Steve through. Despite their differences he was pretty sure Tony hadn’t put him through something the genius thought was unsafe, now though whatever tests he is doing is on just himself… and that was making Steve worry.

     The solider busted through one bag and glared at the pitifully beaten bag breathing slightly hard before he went and set up another. He was sure Tony took what he said wrong. He didn’t know what Tony was doing with the portals, why he was using them to disappear, what was happing with Ross and the UN. Who or why someone had tried to abduct Tony. He didn’t know _anything!_ And on top of it all he felt guilt over Siberia and now worry settled in his gut for Tony. He punched too hard in his frustration and broke through another bag.

      Sometimes he just wanted to wrap Tony up in that bubble wrap stuff and be done with it. The man seemed to attract trouble more than anything Steve had ever seen. As soon as he thought it Steve knew he was being hypocritical with how many fights he had picked himself even before the serum made him able to win, not to mention his situation now. God knows he attracted enough of his own trouble. But Tony…

    ‘But Tony, _what?_ ’ He asked himself leaning his forehead against the still hanging (but leaking sand) bag and catching his breath. Why was it so different when it was Tony? Steve knew the answer to that but had been denying it for a while now. Truth was Tony got under his skin like no one else could. Always knew what buttons to push, to piss him off, even to hurt that one time they first met. Then Steve found Tony knew what buttons helped, healed, and made him happy. Steve sighed against the broken bag. The truth was Tony just mattered more to him, and he knew exactly what all those thoughts meant but he wasn’t about to admit it, even to himself.

      On another Earth Tony step through a glowing light blue portal and immediately began to fall until his jet boots kicked in. Apparently he came out about two hundred feet above Coney Island. Looking around he found no one nearby and locked himself onto the Wi-Fi, thankful he had yet to find a world without Wi-Fi. It was late here, almost midnight, though it had been closer to one am when Tony left. So slight time differential. Interesting, he hadn’t run into that yet.

     He ordered both time zones to the back of his mind and started searching for Shield or whatever equivalent this world had. He was still pissed over Steve’s call and needed something to hit. Shield always had some mission going somewhere when it was still running. Spies never sleep.

     Aaaand Yahtzee. This world was 314 and did have a Shield. Now to find a mission. Tony’s search stuttered for a moment doing a mental double take when he almost sped past a mission that had just been put online. It was assigned to the Avengers. Tony smirked a bit nostalgically and saw they were just logging on a quinjet, headed for a Hydra compound. He wasn’t closer to the mission site, but with his suit he could easily get there first. He didn’t even think about not going.   

      Tony blasted through the air and felt relief as the wind whipped around him. Rogers could always get under his skin, but with a mission and the promise of someone to hit soon, he felt himself calming even as his mind refused to leave the argument. He went over and over the words, if he thought Rogers cared about him the genius might think part of the fight was because Rogers was worried for him. But then he would have at least tried to talk to him before the Accords blew up in their faces. Why would he being trying to talk now? About this?

      It wasn’t any of Rogers’ business anymore anyway. He couldn’t just tell him not to do something. A teammate could do that and Tony would hear them out, a friend could do that and Tony might listen. Rogers had given up his right to both places in Tony’s life though. More like threw it back in Tony’s face but whatever, point is still the same. In the twenty minute flight to the Hydra base Tony had become more dejected than angry.

      In his calmer state he decided instead of just blasting in through the roof he would do a lap around the perimeter. Tony took out twelve sentries and broke into the enemy’s coms before following a Hydra agent in through a hidden opening and knocking the thug out. He propped the guy in the hatch as a bread crumb trail for this Earth’s Avengers to follow and continued down the halls accessing the video feeds. The other Avengers were only about ten minutes out but at this rate Tony figured he’d have everything mostly tied up before they even landed. These guys had no idea their base was compromised and were very unprepared for an assault.

      Iron man strolled through the hallways as he scanned through the video feeds, covering his own presence with looped recordings, and looking for anything interesting. He seriously felt like he was missing something, so he pulled up the Avenger’s mission objectives. Yeah, it was a Hydra base, and they didn’t really need any other reason to bring it down, but what did they suspect was here? Tony frowned when he found the intel. Apparently Shield suspected some form of genetic experiments were being done… with connections to the super soldier serum. It just always had to come back to Rogers, didn’t it?

     “Fuckers.” Came out in a growl from the armor as a group of six agents came around the corner and started firing on him just as he realized the people in this facility were experimenting with Rogers’ blood. They didn’t stand a chance. The bullets bounced off his armor, a few ricocheting back at the Hydra agents. He brought them all down in seconds, but he was pretty sure they now knew he was there.

       With a last kick to one of the downed minions Tony lifted into the air and blew through the halls, screams of ‘It’s Iron man’, and an alarm soon followed him. He ignored them as he hurried to the lab. If they knew he was here then they would try to move stuff and destroy whatever data they didn’t want him to have before fleeing. The lab would have the most access so he needed to be there to extract the data, and whatever experiments they had should be there too. Luckily for him there was video feeds showing him almost every inch of this place through extreamis so he knew exactly where to go.

      After prying open an elevator door and a controlled fall down the shaft, ten stories underground Tony came to a very large metal door. ‘ _Bingo._ ’ He thought with a smirk. As he aimed a repulsor at the door part of him tensed for no reason, it felt like something big was about to change. Pausing for only a moment Iron man fired and the door bent. The large metal doors creaked and fell to the ground.

     Inside there was yelling. The scientists were scrambling, as they tried to either leave, pack up their projects or destroy evidence. All heads turned as one though as Iron man stepped in.

     “Hey guys, I’m not in the best mood. I’d have to except your surrender, but please don’t.” Tony broke the silence. Everyone seemed to snap out of their shock, but didn’t bother replying they just started running. Tony rolled his eyes, these were obviously civilians, but they knew enough to know what they were doing was wrong. So he didn’t feel the least bit bad as he repulsored a few with light blasts that knocked them unconscious.

      The ones that got to the exits he slowly followed. The genius knew they wouldn’t get far, even if they did manage to get out of the building the Avengers would be there by then to greet them. As he follow the fleeing lab techs down the hallway a few Hydra guards turned up with blasters that actually knocked him back.

     “That wasn’t very nice.” Tony smirked condescendingly as the man in one of those ridiculous green Hydra uniforms looked smug for managing to hit him. The look didn’t last long as Iron man moved in swiftly. It wasn’t the fight he wanted but taking out Hydra lackeys was making him feel better. It didn’t take him long to realize they were guarding one of the labs. When he noticed he took them all out as quickly as possible. They weren’t there to stop him, they were stalling him.

      Iron man pushed open the lab door to see one man kneeling on the floor trying to grab something behind some heavy equipment, and another man standing by an opposite door. Both in white lab coats.

      “Leave him!” The man at the door shouted frustratedly before seeing Iron man and running out the door without another word to his companion. Tony let him go, and started towards the kneeling man who turned around at the metal footsteps and froze. The man pulled out a gun, which didn’t concern Tony much as it wasn’t a threat to him. After that though he acted on instinct seeing in almost slow motion as the scientist turned away from him to shoot whoever he’d been reaching for before. The man didn’t even have time to aim properly before he was dead.

      Tony grimaced at the hole through the man’s chest before stilling as he heard a faint whimper. He switched to thermal and his heart sunk as he saw a small form huddled behind the large equipment that the now dead scientist was trying to get to before the man decided to cut his losses and kill the kid. After making sure there were no enemies nearby Iron man retracted his helmet and made his footsteps lighter so they wouldn’t clank threateningly as he made his way to the small form.

     Tony kneeled down, tossing the man’s body away who had tried to kill the kid. He didn’t feel bad about it at all now that he knew what the guy was about to do. Looking into the crease between the wall and the machine Tony spotted wide, frightened blue eyes. His heart melted a little and he tried to seem as non-threatening as a multibillion dollar suit of weaponized armor could.

    “Hey there kid, you alright?” Tony asked as gently as possible. He had been using extreamis to storm through Hydra’s files as soon he was in the underground lab and could excess their systems. He didn’t like what he found. The kid whimpered in a high pitched squeak as Tony slowly pushed away the heavy machine with ease, which he now knew was an artificial womb and incubator pod.

     He reached out an armored hand to the boy and waited. It would be quicker to reach in and just grab the small boy, but the kid had been through enough trauma today. Actually calling the boy a kid wasn’t even very accurate. Tony wasn’t an expert but he didn’t think the boy could be more than three, if that. After a minute the boy seemed to understand that his hiding place was exposed and nothing bad had happened to him. Slowly he reached out and curled a small hand around one red armored finger.               

     “There you go. You’re alright.” Tony smiled gently at the boy before slowly reaching out and pulling the toddler to his chest. The boy seemed shocked that he had been picked up and held close. Tony mirrored that shocked now that he could see the boy better. It was like looking at one of his old baby pictures. He might not have realized at first sight if he hadn’t watched that dumb film Fury gave him a few years back when he was dying. The past him he’d seen playing with the expo model was a slightly older version of the one he was holding, and that… was him.

      It took him longer than he’d admit to find a difference that wasn’t baby fat. The toddler’s eyes were blue, a familiar blue he just couldn’t quiet place. It was the first thing he had noticed before pulling the boy out, the face just threw him completely off. The difference settled him somehow. He had been prepared to meet counterparts of himself eventually but this would be the last scenario he would expect. (Well maybe not the last.) The blue eyes looking at him in wonder and the files he was still scanning told a different story though. It wasn’t one of his counterparts. Genetic experimentation indeed.    

      “Tony?” the soft-spoken word dripping with disbelief and a small side of hope froze Tony’s thoughts in a flash. He had tensed at hearing someone behind him in enemy territory while he had his helmet down and a vulnerable life in his arms, but he knew that voice. The toddler clutched him tight, his small fingers curling into the armor as Tony turned around slowly. Keeping the boy on his opposite side protectively even though he was ninety percent, well eighty percent sure the owner of that voice meant them no harm.

     “…Hi?” Tony replied slowly. Captain America stood in front of him looking like he was seeing a ghost. He had called him, like he hadn’t expected a Tony Stark to be on site. Was he not an Avenger here? But no, it was more than that, Steve looked like he was in total shock. Normally he would wait until they were in a safer location, but suddenly it seemed very important Tony let this Steve know he wasn’t from this world.

      “I take it I wasn’t supposed to be here. But I’m not actually the Tony Stark you know. So whatever he did, or didn’t do, or is supposed to be doing, well he might be doing it?” Tony shut his mouth knowing he was starting to panic at the look on Steve’s half cowl covered face. The solider only blinked at his small rant but it seemed to pull him out of his shock.

     “You’re _not_ Tony?” Steve asked almost angrily but for the desperation that was almost choking him.

    “I am. Just not the one you know. Different universe. I could explain it but-Duck!” Tony cut off firing a blast over Steve’s shoulder just as Steve automatically ducked down into a forward roll at Tony’s command. The blast took out a Hydra agent that had come through the open door Steve had left at his back in his shock, and also taking out a second agent that had been behind him.

    “But it’s a bit complicated and we might want to get out of here first.” Tony finished as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all. The Captain stared at him for a moment before giving a small nod as more Hydra goons started using the open doorway to fire at them from. Tony would probably never admit how much he had missed fighting by Steve’s side.    


End file.
